When editors were gods

An editor with a killer sense of humor, 1922

"The callous editor, into whose presence the aspiring humorist had forced his way, handed back the latest batch of laugh-inspiring offerings.

"'You editors,' remarked the joke artist, 'take life too darn seriously.'

"'On the contrary," chortled the editor. 'I could take yours with positive glee.'"

                                                                                                        — The American Legion Weekly, June 9, 1922

A ‘Golden’ anniversary

The first issue of The Golden Book magazine was cover-dated January 1925, so it would be celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year had it not expired in 1935. A mostly fiction magazine, it was known for publishing prominent authors, living and dead, such as Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Theodore Dreiser, and Leo Tolstoy, rather than the then-famous but now-forgotten magazine hacks of the day.

Other magazines celebrating 100^th anniversaries this year include Arizona Highways and The New Yorker, both of which are still hanging in there.

Another old editor joke, special New Year’s edition

"It seemed that his New Year poem was about to be rejected.

"'You say that December wore on,' sneered the editor. 'What, may I ask, did it wear?'

"'The close of the year?' the poet faltered, smiling tentatively."

                        — a joke that ran in a number of U.S. newspapers in early January 1907

The Editor's Christmas Nightmare, Judge magazine 1888

A fashion editor who defined ruthlessness (and no, it's not who you think)

"She was both stimulating and repellent. She would have killed her own mother in cold blood if it would make for a good page in Bazaar." — photographer Erwin Blumenfeld on longtime Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow, quoted in the book "Vogue 100: A Century of Style." 

Snow wrote a memoir, with Mary Louise Aswell, "The World of Carmel Snow," published posthumously in 1962 and is the subject of a 2005 biography, "A Dash of Daring," by Penelope Rowlands.

Ah, that explains it! Vanity Fair tells what magazine editors do, 1917

"The profession of magazine editing is only too often an abortive attempt, on the part of a third-rate intellect, to gratify the intemperate curiosity of the Masses concerning problems with which they are wholly unfitted to cope, by administering to them, at fixed intervals, the ill-considered and disordered imaginings of a group of underpaid and irresponsible writers…"

— Vanity Fair magazine, in piece titled "How to Edit a Monthly Magazine," February 1917. This sounds a lot like Frank Crowninshield, who was the magazine's editor at the time.

A word of sympathy for the stony-hearted editor

"No outsider can imagine the constant wear and tear on the nerves which is incidental to the conduct of a leading magazine…. Nine-tenths of the work of the magazine editor is to reject the laborious essays of men who have picked out his magazine as the conduit through which their thoughts shall issue to the world. The grief and rage which this rejection means cannot be understood unless one has himself filled the breach. We often hear of the indifference and the stony-hearted cynicism of the magazine editor, but probably there are few men in the world outside of railroad ticket offices and a few similar cages of badgered humanity who are kept so on the stretch by importunity and expostulation."

— The Washington, D.C., Evening Star reflecting on the recent resignation of Lorettus Sutton Metcalf as editor of The Forum magazine, March 19, 1891.   

Amen! A magazine editor joke, circa 1926

"Why wouldn't they ever let an editor take up collection in church?"

"Because he'd reject too many contributions."

— a knee-slapper that made the rounds in 1926, apparently originating in Judge magazine

 

Norman Cousins on birthing a new magazine

"At the very start it's like any pregnancy. You feel the new life stirring inside you — it's quite exciting. Then you get the morning sickness and the pains in the back when things don't work out right." — Norman Cousins in 1972, reflecting on starting his new magazine World after 30-some years as editor of the Saturday Review.

The writer's audience of one (and guess who)

"Writers, it has been said (I may have been the one who said it), write not for general readers but for editors." — Essayist Joseph Epstein, in his 2024 memoir, "Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life."

American (editing) horror story

"Every author has his or her favorite horror story, usually involving the insertion of mistakes and infelicities that were not in the original. In fact, editing here [in the U.S.] has become rewriting; and rewriting of a very low standard." — the late Christopher Hitchens, writing (unless he was rewritten) in 1985.

The quote appears in the 2011 book "The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism."

Yes, it's another nasty magazine editor joke, 1910

“Despairing Mother: He hasn’t the slightest ear for poetry or good literature, and he has no idea at all of what real life is like.

“Friend: He’ll make a bully magazine editor.”

                                                                                 — The Burlington (Kansas) Daily Republican, Oct. 10, 1910