If a literary hangout is by nature exclusive, with a cast of maladjusted drinkers, the Half King has a long way to go.

These days the West End has devolved from a literary hangout with a certain panache into a fairly ordinary college gathering place.

She lived at the elegant Midtown hotel, the literary hangout of the Jazz Age, from 1946 until her death, spending most afternoons in her lobby armchair greeting regulars.

"It was probably a good thing I was so ignorant about everything back then," he said recently at Oxford's literary hangout, Square Books.

"Altman wasn't a buddy," said Ms. Kaufman, who runs, after all, a literary hangout.

Her favorite local literary hangout in the village, the birthplace of the poet and journalist Walt Whitman, is the Book Revue.

He pulls in behind Bobby Van's, the once-fabled literary hangout turned raucous young renters' haven, enters through the back door, and is shown a table open to the traffic-jam-less street.

Still popular with young crowds is the White Horse Tavern, built in 1880, which became a literary hangout for Dylan Thomas and other writers in the 1950's.

A favorite coffee and literary hangout, the Elliott Bay Book Company, is at First and Main.