Alison Rose, The New Yorker’s Femme Fatale, Dies at 81
Alison Rose, a beguiling, if inept, receptionist at The New Yorker who found her way into the magazine’s pages with her idiosyncratic essays and profiles — including one article about her time there and the men who were her mentors and lovers that landed like a grenade and became the basis of a memoir — died in late September at her home in Manhattan. She was 81.
The author Honor Moore, a friend, said the cause and exact date of Ms. Rose’s death were not known.
Ms. Rose was 41 when she arrived at The New Yorker. She was beautiful, bright and hapless, having careened through her previous decades between New York and California trying to find a place in the world. She had worked, or tried to work, as an actor and a model. She was nearly photographed for Vogue, but had a habit of canceling bookings at the last minute, frozen with anxiety and the aftereffects of binge eating.
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