Saturday Night Fever story was based on fiction

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When I first approached Cohn for this article, he said he no longer wanted to discuss the topic. But after several back-and-forth emails, he did say that he doubted any magazine would publish the Tribal Rites piece today. “It reads to me as obvious fiction, albeit based on observation and some knowledge of disco culture. No way could it sneak past customs now. In the 60s and 70s, the line between fact and fiction was blurry. Many magazine writers used fictional techniques to tell supposedly factual stories. No end of liberties were taken. Few editors asked tough questions. For the most part it was a case of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.

“Magazine writing then was basically a boys’ club. There was a lot of wretched excess. Along with some great writing came reams of self-indulgent bollocks. Tribal Rites being fiction was never a great secret. I remember once, at the end of a long night, blurting out to a publisher that the story was made up. ‘You don’t say,’ the publisher drawled. ‘And Liberace is gay.’”

Caroline Miller, who edited New York magazine at the time of Cohn’s confession, said her predecessor, Felker, wouldn’t have published Tribal Rites if he thought it fabricated. “That said, remember that 70s Brooklyn was a foreign country to most New York magazine editors,” she told me. “It wasn’t cool, and some of them had probably never been there – even to Brooklyn Heights, which was Norman Mailer territory. So they may not have had good radar for credibility. Also, after the zeitgeisty opening about the blue-collar disco tribe, [Tribal Rites] is all narrative, and that much narrative detail tends to read as real. Conversation in cars. What Vincent was thinking as he looked in the mirror…”

Cohn has always maintained that what was genuine was the staying power of Saturday Night Fever itself. That central figure, with all his grace, energy and passion. A nobody who once a week was a somebody. “Tribal Rites is about identity,” he said. “Finding a place in the world where you can shine. What still resonates, to me at least, is the sense of yearning. If I was writing the story today, Vincent might be trans…”