The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution by Marc Weingarten
Authors: Marc Weingarten
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, American, Language Arts & Disciplines, Journalism, Mailer; Norman - Criticism and Interpretation, Wolfe; Tom - Criticism and Interpretation, Didion; Joan - Criticism and Interpretation, American Prose Literature - 20th Century - History and Criticism, Capote; Truman - Criticism and Interpretation, Reportage Literature; American - History and Criticism, Journalism - United States - History - 20th Century
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society life and I didn’t admire it. Harold became my champion. He was one of those rare editors that didn’t have writer’s envy. At that time, a lot of editors wanted to be published, so there was a lot of tension and edge to them. Harold didn’t have any of that.”
Now that he had a proper title, Hayes began to steer the magazine with a firmer hand. To Gingrich, Hayes was like a film auteur, an editor who could masterfully organize all of the graphic and editorial elements of an issue into a pleasing, unifying whole that reflected his own tastes and sensibilities. But Felker knew that much of what made
Esquire
exciting could be directly attributed to him—not only the Mailer piece, but the hiring of David Levine, an artist he had discovered at a small downtown art gallery. Levine’s distinctive line drawings of literary and entertainment figures in
Esquire
launched his long and distinguished career. He had also edited Tom Morgan, and brought in Peter Maas, who years later found literary fame as the author of the Mafia insider’s account
The Valachi Papers
. But “Harold was very ambitious, and he was undermining me with Gingrich,” said Felker. “He was a very good editor, but ruthless.”
Hayes drafted a confidential memo to Gingrich, outlining his master plan to implement “a more active control of all our materials.” According to the memo,
Esquire’s
separate editorial camps were creating an “inequitable distribution of work inside the editorial office.” Hayes outlined a new top-down system in which he would oversee every aspect of the magazine. “It is very difficult—and even unfair of me—to assume responsibility and control over Clay’s features so long as he has implicit authority from you to handle them as he sees fit. I am willing to do this, however—in fact I am willing to provoke a crisis of several megatons if that should be the best way to handle the problem.” All story ideas would pass though Hayes’s desk first, and the overall budget would be determined by him as well. Gingrich would interface only with Hayes, who would become the sole emissary of the editorial department. Theidea, Hayes wrote, is to “maintain maximum autonomy with minimum anarchy.”
Gingrich signed off on the memo, and Felker was left in the lurch. In June 1962 Felker was the apparent aggressor in a heated shouting match with comedian Mort Sahl shortly after an appearance by Sahl at the Basin Street nightclub. Sahl had taken issue with a story in the magazine that had referred to him as “the light that failed,” and asked Felker if someone at
Esquire
had a personal animus against him. Felker’s response was typically curt: “I don’t like you, Mort.” “Felker was quite drunk at the time,” recalls Sahl. “I didn’t take kindly to his tone.” Then, according to legal papers filed by Sahl, Felker threatened to bury the comic in the magazine. Felker claimed that the incident had occurred in Sahl’s dressing room; the editor had tried to convince Sahl to reconsider an interview with a writer the comic had initially rejected. When Sahl’s lawyers began sending letters to the magazine hinting at a lawsuit, Gingrich, who had maintained a polite distance from all the infighting among his editors, couldn’t allow Felker’s short-tempered outbursts to continue if lawyers were now going to be involved. Forced to play his hand, he gave Felker the shove.
Felker’s replacement, an editor at Time-Life Books named Byron Dobell, had the owlish aspect of a college professor and a lively intelligence that translated into unorthodox story ideas. “I moved right into Clay’s office, which wasn’t easy at first,” said Dobell. “Despite what had happened with Gingrich, the staff liked him. I had to win everyone over by doing a good job.”
Even as a newcomer, Dobell was unwilling to indulge the digressive whims of star writers, even if it meant a complete blue-pencil evisceration of a story. He favored
Now that he had a proper title, Hayes began to steer the magazine with a firmer hand. To Gingrich, Hayes was like a film auteur, an editor who could masterfully organize all of the graphic and editorial elements of an issue into a pleasing, unifying whole that reflected his own tastes and sensibilities. But Felker knew that much of what made
Esquire
exciting could be directly attributed to him—not only the Mailer piece, but the hiring of David Levine, an artist he had discovered at a small downtown art gallery. Levine’s distinctive line drawings of literary and entertainment figures in
Esquire
launched his long and distinguished career. He had also edited Tom Morgan, and brought in Peter Maas, who years later found literary fame as the author of the Mafia insider’s account
The Valachi Papers
. But “Harold was very ambitious, and he was undermining me with Gingrich,” said Felker. “He was a very good editor, but ruthless.”
Hayes drafted a confidential memo to Gingrich, outlining his master plan to implement “a more active control of all our materials.” According to the memo,
Esquire’s
separate editorial camps were creating an “inequitable distribution of work inside the editorial office.” Hayes outlined a new top-down system in which he would oversee every aspect of the magazine. “It is very difficult—and even unfair of me—to assume responsibility and control over Clay’s features so long as he has implicit authority from you to handle them as he sees fit. I am willing to do this, however—in fact I am willing to provoke a crisis of several megatons if that should be the best way to handle the problem.” All story ideas would pass though Hayes’s desk first, and the overall budget would be determined by him as well. Gingrich would interface only with Hayes, who would become the sole emissary of the editorial department. Theidea, Hayes wrote, is to “maintain maximum autonomy with minimum anarchy.”
Gingrich signed off on the memo, and Felker was left in the lurch. In June 1962 Felker was the apparent aggressor in a heated shouting match with comedian Mort Sahl shortly after an appearance by Sahl at the Basin Street nightclub. Sahl had taken issue with a story in the magazine that had referred to him as “the light that failed,” and asked Felker if someone at
Esquire
had a personal animus against him. Felker’s response was typically curt: “I don’t like you, Mort.” “Felker was quite drunk at the time,” recalls Sahl. “I didn’t take kindly to his tone.” Then, according to legal papers filed by Sahl, Felker threatened to bury the comic in the magazine. Felker claimed that the incident had occurred in Sahl’s dressing room; the editor had tried to convince Sahl to reconsider an interview with a writer the comic had initially rejected. When Sahl’s lawyers began sending letters to the magazine hinting at a lawsuit, Gingrich, who had maintained a polite distance from all the infighting among his editors, couldn’t allow Felker’s short-tempered outbursts to continue if lawyers were now going to be involved. Forced to play his hand, he gave Felker the shove.
Felker’s replacement, an editor at Time-Life Books named Byron Dobell, had the owlish aspect of a college professor and a lively intelligence that translated into unorthodox story ideas. “I moved right into Clay’s office, which wasn’t easy at first,” said Dobell. “Despite what had happened with Gingrich, the staff liked him. I had to win everyone over by doing a good job.”
Even as a newcomer, Dobell was unwilling to indulge the digressive whims of star writers, even if it meant a complete blue-pencil evisceration of a story. He favored
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