WHAT BECOMES A LETTER MOST

By Jamie Malanowski

The upscale bookseller Rizzoli announced plans to open a branch in a little boite in the main Benetton outlet on Fifth Avenue. The store, full of books about fashion, food and style, is meant to be the last word in trendiness. Its name? The e Cafe. For a decade, the alphabet's most culturally significant letter has been X. First there was Malcolm X, then the X-Men, The X-Files, the X Games, the fX network, and Gen X. But X, alas, is ex, its reign exhausted. The era of E (or e) has begun. The e Cafe joins the top-rated television series ER, the popular magazine Entertainment Weekly (widely called EW), cbs's highly praised series EZ Streets, the irreverent E! Entertainment Television, the resurgent E. coli bacteria and the favored form of communication of the cognoscenti, E-mail, plus its multifarious electronic spin-offs, e-cash, e-commerce, et al. Can the e.e. cummings revival be far off?

--By Jamie Malanowski