Gatsby 2.0

Did anyone else read Tim Arango’s recent NYTimes’ article about Vivi Nevo, Internet man of mystery, and wonder why the journalist didn’t invoke Jay Gatsby, the self-made man of another bubble-infused age?

Of all the characters the media business attracts — and creates, for that matter — perhaps no one is more remarked upon, wondered about or marveled at than Mr. Nevo. Among his many overlapping circles of friends, nearly all say that Mr. Nevo is a force in their lives: a loyal friend, a trusted conveyor and keeper of information and someone who never forgets a birthday or a bar mitzvah.

You get the feeling Arango had some off-the-record allegations he wanted to unleash but couldn’t cajole into the daylight, hence the repeated and elaborate “what does Vivi really do?” incantations?

Those who knew Mr. Nevo in the 1980s, after he moved to New York from Israel, have watched his rise with curiosity.

“You’re asking questions I’ve asked myself many times,” said Nicolas Rachline, who met Mr. Nevo in the late 1980s when both were part of a fashionable New York expatriate crowd that hung out at Le Bilboquet, a French restaurant on the Upper East Side. “What the hell does Vivi do? He seems to be a powerful player in the entertainment industry. How, I don’t know.”

Maybe we’ll know someday.