Book review: “When the course was good”, by Graydon Carter
Printed magazines are today editorial striping. Journalism is among the majors of the most regrettable colleges. Carter often had 400 -page problems, with 140 pages of editorial to fill. In these pre-internet days, its employees lived well. They spent meals and flowers and hotel rooms and long black cars. (“Fashion concerns long black cars when you need it”, the editor-in-chief of the Harper bazaar, Liz Tilberris, commented once.) Almost everyone had one or two joyful, attractive and often well-born assistants. Interest loans and car leases could be obtained. Employees could withdraw money by signing a blow. A eyebrow lady came to do work for women who wanted it. Carter lived better than the others. Her passport photo was taken by Annie Leibowitz.
Carter sit after each issue and wrote a note of thanks to each writer, photographer and advertiser. The former rebel had taken over the Empire. At the start, it was difficult to sit during the dinners, he wrote, because he had made formidable enemies to the spy. He managed to smooth the ruffled feathers. He has become a delighted observer of dinners, in fact, noting that in Los Angeles, “husbands and wives are seated together. In New York, husbands and women sit at the same table but not together. In Europe, husbands and wives are seated at different tables – all the best, apparently, for post -dinner gossip taken during the meal. »»
Carter offers detailed and above all affectionate portraits of figures such as Newhouse, an ideal publisher in that it was generous and little inclined to mingle; The Hollywood is supening Sue Mengers, who helped Carter reach the level of California he needed to welcome the annual parties of Vanity Fair Oscars; And the writer Dominick Dunne, who covered the success of the 1990s, including the OJ and the Menendez brothers for the magazine.
Less affectionate is his portrait of Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, who, according to him, helped him get him out of Condé Nast in 2017. His efforts to seem intimidating were comical, he wrote. He laughs at his habit of wearing sunglasses inside and eating his meals (“steak, rare”) with the rapid efficiency of an McKinsey consultant. He refers to his Met Galas also close to but “not quite at the level of a protective racket”, since advertisers are obliged to buy tables for $ 250,000 – or. He could almost “feel fear” in his offices. Wintour tended to greet Carter as a lost friend for a long time or as the car attendant, he wrote.
The old damage is punctuated. He rejects, for example, against the idea that Vanity Fair deliberately went easily to Jeffrey Epstein in a 2003 profile. There is not much on Carter’s weddings (three) or children (five) in this memory. He is proud to reserve his evenings for them, he said. He does not try to reconcile this comment with the fact that, being a university socializer, he seems to have been released every evening.
