When editors were gods

Robert Gottlieb on the 'noble' profession of editing

"I don’t like writing. I hate writing, I never wanted to be a writer. I think it's an ignoble profession. As opposed to editing, which is a noble profession because it's a service profession. Whom are you serving when you write? Yourself, your ego. No, no, no. Editing is a noble profession." — Robert Gottlieb, in his acceptance speech on receiving the inaugural Editorial Excellence Award from the Biographers International Organization in 2014.

(I was there and believe he was at least sort of kidding.)

Gottlieb, who died this past June, was best-known as a book editor, especially for the acclaimed biographies of Robert A. Caro, but also did a stint as editor of The New Yorker, from 1987 to 1992.

R.I.P. Julia Scully, 1929-2023

Julia Scully, longtime editor of Modern Photography magazine, died on July 18, according to this recently published New York Times obituary.

The magazine has been defunct since 1989 and is probably largely forgotten today. Readers of the time, however, and that includes me, may remember it as the most magical of the several magazines that catered to serious amateur photographers, introducing us not only to the latest gear but to photographers who were doing something interesting.

Weirdly, the relatively lengthy Wikipedia entry for Modern Photography magazine doesn't even mention her—as of today (August 6, 2023), at least. 

Julia Scully was 94.

Mark Twain draws a distinction betwen editors and God Almighty

"Any editor to whom I submit my manuscripts has an undisputed right to delete anything to which he objects, but God Almighty Himself has no right to put words in my mouth that I never used!" — an irate Mark Twain complaining to the editors of St. Nicholas magazine about their handling of material from his book "Tom Sawyer Abroad."

The quote comes from illustrator Dan Beard's 1939 autobiography, "Hardly a Man Is Now Alive." Beard writes that he wasn't present for Twain's outburst but heard about it from several staffers.

 

Even more intimidating than presidents or movie stars

"A writer may never find himself intimidated by governors or even presidents, by tycoons or even movie stars, for he knows he has the power to write about them. But editors have the power to pass on his writing." — Meyer Levin in his 1973 nonfiction book, "The Obsession."

Levin is probably best remembered today as the author of "Compulsion," a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case.

R.I.P. Robert Gottlieb, 1931-2023

"You are the living god. You are not there to please the writers, but the writers are there to satisfy you because they want to be in the magazine." — Robert Gottlieb, onetime New Yorker editor, quoted in his obituary in today's New York Times. Gottlieb was contrasting magazine editing with book editing, where, he said, the editor's job was "to serve the book and the writer."

Gottlieb's memoir, "Avid Reader," was published in 2016.

A Time capsule of magazine history

As of June 1, anyone can access the Time.com website, including 100 years of back issues, free of charge. Readers of this blog might want to check out the magazine's extensive (if often bite-size) coverage of its own industry over the decades. 

There is, for example, its 1977 portrait of Clay Felker, then riding high at New York magazine: "He is variously described by associates and acquaintances as autocratic, devious, dishonest, rapacious, egotistical, power mad, paranoid, a bully and a boor. Almost in the same breath, the same people call Felker a genius."

Or its 1929 account of a cloak-and-dagger operation by Cosmopolitan magazine and its "short, stocky, chesty Editor [Ray] Long" to publish a reminiscence by the departing president Calvin Coolidge without competitors finding out about it first. (Apparently getting anything out of Silent Cal was a very big deal at the time.)

Or a 1965 item announcing that one Helen Gurley Brown, 43, had been appointed editor of Cosmopolitan — a magazine she would soon make unrecognizable to readers of Ray Long's day. "The magazine is bubbling with enthusiasm over its new editor, even though she has had no editing experience," Time reported.

There's a lot more here, some of which we'll explore in future posts.

The next issue is always going to be better

"Automobile manufacturers, novelists, fathers and magazine editors all have one trait in common — an unrestrained enthusiasm for the future. A man involved in any one of these risky ventures is perfectly willing to talk to you about his current model (convertible, whodunit, elder child, June issue), but if you really want to see a spark in his eye and hear him burble with hopeful pride, ask him about his next effort — the 1956 car, the unpublished manuscript, the newborn baby, the July issue." — from an editor's note in Holiday magazine, June 1955.

It’s Editormania!

Editor’s note: The following fantasy (or whatever it is) is a departure for this blog, which normally finds enough to amuse itself in real-life magazine history. However, having written it and not having any other obvious outlet for it, we’re posting it here.

 

It’s Editormania!

“I would distress my publicity directors because people wanted interviews with me and I wouldn't do them because I thought editors should be unseen and unheard. Do the work. Shut up. Get on with it.” — Robert Gottlieb, interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” January 3, 2023.

The release of the documentary “Turn Every Page” has changed everything, several prominent editors say. The film, which focuses on the working relationship between the biographer Robert Caro and his longtime editor Robert Gottlieb, has given viewers a rare glimpse of what editors actually do and, in the process, led to a nationwide frenzy that can only be described as editormania.

“I’ve spent decades bemoaning the anonymity of the job,” one previously obscure editor says. “Now I’d give anything to have that back.”

On recent out-of-town trips, the editor reports, he has found himself chased through airports by eager selfie seekers and, in one instance, offered a romantic interlude in an unlocked utilities closet by a star-struck fan. He says he considered it, simply out of politeness, but ultimately declined.

“This,” he adds, “is not what I signed up for.”

Like all of the editors interviewed for this article, he asked to remain anonymous.

Personally touching an editor, or even an object once touched by an editor, has become an obsession for many fans. A wrinkled cocktail napkin believed to have been sneezed into by a well-known fashion magazine editor recently sold on eBay for over $800. “I think they want her DNA,” says one rival editor, speculating that the buyer might hope to clone her once the technology becomes available. "As if one of her wasn't enough."

The rival editor recently saw a pencil stub filched from her own wastebasket offered at the Buy It Now price of $499, while her used Post-its were going for $25 and up. She suspects that editorial assistants and junior editors at the company are sifting through the trash after hours and putting items up for sale to supplement their salaries. “I know living in New York is expensive for young people and I sympathize,” she says, “but what I would say to them is, ‘Don’t you realize that this could be you someday?’”

Some souvenir hunters have become even bolder, another editor reports. “I have had them come after me with scissors, trying to snip a piece of my clothing or even my hair,” she says. “One made off with my Lhasa Apso.”

A limo driver who often works for Manhattan-based magazine publishers says his life has changed, as well. “Used to be editors were easy,” he explains. “Now it’s like movie stars or boy bands. I’ve had fans splayed on the hood, pressing their noses against the windows, tailing us on scooters and electric bikes. I can spend half the day wiping off their fingerprints.”

On the other hand, he adds, the phenomenon has been good for business. Many publishing houses, he says, are now booking second and third limos to serve as decoys.

Some editors have given up on limos altogether. One women's magazine editor, formerly a self-described "Limousine Queen," now gets around town huddled in the back of a Boor's Head delivery truck.

But editors appear to be particularly vulnerable on foot. Tired of being accosted whenever he steps out of his office building, one 60-something book editor has taken to wearing a hoodie, not only on the street but even in the restaurants he frequents.

“The worst thing,” he says, “is when you’re walking down the street with one of your best-known authors, and a mob of groupies comes out of nowhere. The author starts to get his pen out, but then all anybody wants is the editor’s autograph. So the author has to stand off to the side, pretending not to care. I’ve had relationships ruined this way.”

Other editors say they can no longer go outside for a smoke without being pestered. “Even if they keep a respectful distance and don’t come up to you, the second you drop a cigarette butt, somebody’s diving for it,” one says.

The problem is not limited to New York. The Dallas-based editor of a major hunting magazine says fans have begun camping out at his favorite duck blind, hoping he’ll make an appearance. At night, he says, they will often gather around his home, making loud quacking noises until he comes to a window.

The Los Angeles-based editor of a leading automotive magazine has seen his cars repeatedly stripped by souvenir hunters. At a recent racing event, he says, one fan had the nerve to ask him to autograph a catalytic converter stolen the week before from a station wagon parked in his driveway. “It wasn’t even my car,” he says, shaking his head.

In Phoenix, the retired editor of a popular sports weekly says he’s stopped attending Diamondbacks games, once a favorite activity. “I’m signing so many baseballs I barely have time to look up,” he explains. “I tell the fans, ‘Why don’t you go get a player’s autograph, for God’s sake? And, no, I will not sign your lady friend’s chest.’”

Not every editor is bothered by the new attention. The longtime editor of a trade magazine serving the funeral industry says it’s had its plusses. “The wife makes fun of my dark glasses,” he says, “but she likes the way that maître d’s now fawn all over us.”

Incidentally, “Turn Every Page” will be screened at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center on May 19, with a Q&A with director Lizzie Gottlieb to follow, as part of this year’s Biographers International Organization annual conference.

 

The editor in hell, 1921

"I had a vision of editors in hell. Each sat surrounded by literary men whose souls he had damned and whose work he had disfigured. These put bits of tarred twine between his toes and set light to them. After that they tied him down and read aloud yards of the stuff he had accepted. And that was the worst torture of hell." — from an unsigned item in the Musical Courier magazine, June 30, 1921. The magazine credits The Triad, an Australian publication, as the original source of this charming sentiment.

The mystery of where editors come from, 1921

"Where do editors come from? I don't know. You might as well ask me where the sparrows go to when they die. I have known about 355 editors intimately, and I never met the father or mother of any one of them, and certainly never heard the grandfather of any one of them so much as referred to. I think they come out of the ground in some slum when there is a hard shower after a long spell of dry weather." — from an unsigned item in the Musical Courier magazine, June 30, 1921. The magazine credits The Triad, an Australian publication, as the original source.

Next time, the same writer imagines where editors go after death and what awaits them there. Hint: It isn't pleasant.

The typical editor's office, 1927

“Today your editor is rather inclined to look like an East Indian potentate surrounded by all the pomp and ceremony that hedge a king. He sits inviolate and immured within paneling of Mexican mahogany, under mellowing oil paintings and surrounded by onyx pillars and Persian rugs and rosewood desk tops, with an undersecretary who receives you in the waiting room upholstered with brown Morocco, and ushers you into the anteroom with probably a Louis Quinze motif predominating, where you are received by the great one’s personal lady confidante and eventually passed into the royal presence itself.” — an anonymous “author’s wife,” who seems to have accompanied her hubby on visits to editors, writing in The Saturday Evening Post in 1927.

By all accounts the author was Margaret Stringer, whose husband, Arthur Stringer, was a well-known novelist, poet, and magazine writer. That same year she published a widely praised book on the topic, “Confessions of an Author's Wife,” also anonymously.

Michael Lewis on the 'sad lot' of editors

"[I]t has always been the sad lot of editors to remain impatiently anonymous while their writers — whom they regard invariably and sometimes justly as idiots — become famous." — Author Michael Lewis, writing in American Heritage magazine in 1994.

Lewis's piece riffs on a series of cigarette cards issued in the 1880s that depict 50 leading newspaper editors of the day. You can see them in all their bewhiskered glory here. To my knowledge (and, frankly, astonishment), magazine editors have never been similarly honored.