The Four Seasons was abuzz Thursday when the Kenyon Review honored sportswriter Roger Angell and Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco.The Midwest met Manhattan in Midtown, as literature lovers were drawn together by high regard for this quarterly, based in Gambier, Ohio, which was founded in 1939 by poet and critic John Crowe Ransom.

The audience roared when Mayor Bloomberg, referring to his election win on Tuesday, told the audience, “Well, being here tonight, I can’t say it’s the highlight of my week.”

Speaking of his literary ability, Mr. Bloomberg proceeded to read a poem – one, he said to audience mirth, that cynics in the audience would claim his speech writers had composed. It went something like this:

On the campaign, the question arose,
What big second-term plans I proposed?
I said, “First thing I’ll do –
Toast the Kenyon Review”
After that, really, who the hell knows?

Speaking about nonfiction, Mr. Bloomberg said someone once said the rarest book in the world is an unautographed copy of “Bloomberg by Bloomberg.”

Harvest Books publisher Andre Bernard presented the award to Italian author Umberto Eco. Mr. Bernard opened by telling the story of a young woman who was dining with poet T.S. Eliot. Eliot asked her to call him “Tom,” and she replied, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly! You were required reading.”

Auction items that evening included lunch at the Four Seasons with Walter Cronkite as well as a mesh ring and a bright yellow beaded purse that belonged to Gerald and Sara Murphy, the models for Dick and Nicole in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender Is the Night.” Kenyon College alumna Laura Donnelly, granddaughter of Sara and Gerald Murphy, donated these Jazz Age mementos.

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GRANTS FOR ARTISTS AND WRITERS

Last week at Poets House in SoHo, the Money for Women / Barbara Deming Memorial Fund celebrated three decades of awarding stipends to dancers, musicians, videographers, writers, and visual artists. The fund was begun by the poet and civil rights activist Barbara Deming (1917-84), who grew up in New City, N.Y., on a rural road noted for prominent writers and artists such as Maxwell Anderson, John Houseman, Lotte Lenya, Burgess Meredith, Helen Hayes, and Henry Varnum Poor. In Lewis Dabney’s recent biography of Edmund Wilson, there is a photo of Deming and Wilson in Wellfleet, Mass. Wilson’s former wife, the novelist and critic Mary McCarthy, once remarked in the Nation that Deming was a rare feminist writer she admired. Daniel Ellsberg has cited Deming’s writing on civil disobedience as a pivotal influence on his decision to release the Pentagon Papers.

Board members at the event included Maureen Brady, who teaches at New York University, and Sarah Van Arsdale, who teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

In the audience was Susan Haskins, producer of the PBS series “Theatre Talk.” Grantees present included Peggy Ann Tartt, author of “Among Bones” (Lotus Press), and novelist Roz Unruh, author of “A Stripper’s Tale,” a chronicle of a stripper’s dysfunctional childhood.

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FOCUS ON AUTHORS The Leica Gallery hosted an opening of Nancy Crampton’s photographs of writers on Thursday, on view until December 10. One photo of Truman Capote was taken in a park by the United Nations, near where he lived at the time. Ms. Crampton said the photo was taken three months before he died. When she arrived, Capote was waiting for her downstairs at his apartment building. He had told her to meet him at 4 p.m., since by then “he’d be sober.”

In the show were photos of Derek Walcott (1977) and Edward Albee (1994). Both were speaking further uptown that evening, Mr. Albee at a program hosted by the Center for Communications at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium and Mr. Walcott at an Academy of American Poets evening at the Americas Society.

gshapiro@nysun.com