A great lede and a buzzy Arts Beat article by Jennifer Schuessler in the New York Times. Apparently there was a film shoot at the newish Kos Kaffe in Park Slope and a host of Brooklyn opulent literati were there. Jennifer Egan, Mary Morris, Tad Friend and others…

Brooklyn is famously lousy with writers, as Holden Caulfield might have put it. But at 7 am on Monday morning, Kos Kaffe in Park Slope was even lousier than usual.

At one table, Jennifer Egan sat scribbling on a yellow legal pad, not far from Roxana Robinson, Philip Gourevitch, John Burnham Schwartz and Jane Green. Across the room, Michael Cunningham chatted with Nick Flynn, while Mary Morris sat with a battered notebook and a pile of printouts and Darin Strauss checked ESPN.com on his laptop.

The occasion was the shooting of a scene in Michael Maren’s forthcoming film, “A Short History of Decay,” that aims to show off the most impressive mass literary cameo in recent film history. But some in attendance, perhaps hopped up on free espresso, jokingly reached for even more grandiose claims.

“This is our Black and White Ball,” said the New Yorker writer Tad Friend (referring to Truman Capote’s legendary 1966 party at the Plaza Hotel), before turning back to revisions on his upcoming article about underwater mortgages.