The Accidental Life
Page 34
MASTHEADS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN closely studied by the people who appear on them, although the New Yorker has never published one, and some major magazines don’t run them anymore. At my last magazine, Sports Illustrated, I would sometimes give that space to a story that needed more room. Many names from those years are conspicuous in their absence from these pages—and I would work with anyone on that masthead again. Some I knew in a tighter way: Kelli Anderson, Chris Ballard, Michael Bamberger, David Bauer, Matt Bean, Mark Bechtel, Steve Cannella, Karen Carpenter, Jeff Chadiaha, Neil Cohen, Judith Daniels, Seth Davis, Richard Deitsch, Richard Demak, Farrell Evans, Michael Farber, Rob Fleder, Damon Hack, Jim Herre, Hank Hersch, Chris Hunt, Lee Jenkins, Bob Kanell, Stefanie Kaufman, Greg Kelly, Kostya Kennedy, Tim Layden, Jack McCallum, Geoff Michaud, Gabe Miller, Austin Murphy, Rich O’Brien, Ian Orefice, Abigail Pellegrino, Joe Posnanski, B. J. Schecter, Alan Shipnuck, Chris Stone, Jim Trotter, Grant Wahl, Alex Wolff, Paul Zimmerman.
And especially Mike Bevans.
NOTHING WAS RANDOM about the help I had on this manuscript, starting years before I knew I would write it. Joanie McDonell, who was a book editor before she became a writer, introduced me to many of the writers in this book, as well as to book editors who became close friends. Morgan Entrekin and Gary Fisketjon top that list.
MY FIRST READER on this book, Bob Roe, simultaneously flared ideas and tightened bands—and there is no stronger editing than that. My second reader was Amanda Urban, who shapes books as incisively as she structures deals. Her directness was purifying. Then, of course, she did what she has done for thirty-five years: she helped me. Third was Susan Lyne, media executive, entrepreneur and still, after three decades, insightful editor and friend.
Cody Wiewandt diligently fact-checked my reporting, but any mistakes are mine.
At Knopf, Jennifer Kurdyla managed many, many details with grace and efficiency. Copy editor Bonnie Thompson and production editor Maria Massey took me pleasantly to school. I am grateful for the sophistication of Iris Weinstein’s design, and Chip Kidd’s elegant work on the jacket.
Sonny Mehta, Paul Bogaards and Robin Desser acquired the book for Knopf, which de facto makes them heroic to me—especially Robin, who marched with me over every page: Sapere aude.
SOURCING
FOR MANY YEARS I believed plagiarism was never an accident. The Web changed my mind, even though stealing by accident is still stealing and lying about it is a conscious act. That is tautological but I want to emphasize it.
While writing this book I was often online, checking my memory and old notes against infinite trails of information about the writers I had edited. I cruised their work looking for remembered passages and finding new ideas about what they had written. I made notes and collected fragments I thought would be useful to look at later—the way all journalists work to some degree on almost everything they write. The result, of course, is now something I am publishing as mine.
So in that way I am an aggregator, with many debts to what was written, reported and thought before. As a journalist, I want to pay those debts with full and proper credit, and I have tried to do that. But I was always aware that if I overlooked an appropriate acknowledgment or somehow conflated something I’d found into my own experience, what David Carr called the “self-cleaning tendencies of the Web” would indict me. I welcome the opportunity to correct any unintended sloppiness, however humiliating that may be.
As part of the checking, I also tracked down permission to run the longer quotes, and correspondences—including the letters from the Other Bob Sherrill. He had died, at home in his bed, in his little house on Cobb Street in Durham, North Carolina, in 2007. The last time anyone had seen him he was watching the Fourth of July fireworks from his front porch. A few days later his mail was piling up, and everyone knew that was not like him. Mail was important and he read it with the same editor’s eye and ear he used on everything. He liked to tell the story about how Tom Wolfe’s seminal 1963 piece, “There goes (VAROOM! VAROOM!) that Kandy Kolored (THPHHHHHH!) tangerine-flake streamline baby (RAHGHHHH!) around the bend (BRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM),” had been written as a letter to his editor, Byron Dobell, summarizing his notes when he was having trouble writing the story Esquire had assigned him about the custom-car culture in Southern California. Esquire used the first sentence as the headline, and ran the letter.
As for Bob’s letters, I saved them like the artifacts they are, and they traveled with me to thirteen magazines over thirty years. Reading them one day in 2012 when I was packing up my files to leave Time Inc. tripped me into thinking I could write this book. Bob would have made it better, especially if I wanted any of it to be about letting life happen to you, regardless of the pain and so on but with its soaring joy. Impossible to fact-check, but knowable as true.
PERMISSIONS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Alfred Music and Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from “Livingston Saturday Night,” words and music by Jimmy Buffett, copyright © 1978 by EMI Unart Catalog Inc. and Songs of Universal, Inc. Exclusive print rights on behalf of EMI Unart Catalog Inc. administered by Alfred Music. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Music and Hal Leonard Corporation. Francesca Bell: Excerpt from “I Long to Hold the Poetry Editor’s Penis in My Hand” by Francesca Bell. Originally published in Rattle (#40, Summer 2013). Reprinted by permission of Francesca Bell. Richard Ford: Excerpt from “Good Raymond” by Richard Ford, published in “Personal History” section in the New Yorker (October 5, 1998). Reprinted by permission of Richard Ford. Milkweed Editions: Excerpt from Postcard from Ed by Edward Abbey, copyright © 2006 by Edward Abbey. Reprinted by permission of Milkweed Editions (www.milkweed.org). Music Sales Corporation: Excerpt from “Kodachrome,” words and music by Paul Simon, copyright © 1973 by Paul Simon (BMI). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Music Sales Corporation. The New Yorker: Excerpt from “Postscript: Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014)” by James Salter, published in the New Yorker (April 14, 2014). Reprinted by permission of the New Yorker. The Paris Review: Excerpts from “Ernest Hemingway: The War of Fiction No. 21,” published in the Paris Review (issue 18, Spring 1958) and “Hunter S. Thompson: The Art of Journalism No. 1,” published in the Paris Review (issue 156, Fall 2000). Reprinted by permission of the Paris Review. Sports Afield and Robert F. Jones: “Wampus Cats & Oyster Toads” by Robert F. Jones, published in Sports Afield, vol. 211, issue 5 (May 1994). Reprinted by permission of Sports Afield and Robert F. Jones. Wylie Agency: Excerpts from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson, first published in “More Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon Bites the Bomb” by Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone, copyright © 1973 by Hunter S. Thompson. Reprinted by permission of Wylie Agency. Tom Zito: Excerpt from “The Bang Behind the Bucks, The Life Behind the Style” by Tom Zito, published in Newsweek (Fall 1984). Copyright © Tom Zito. Reprinted by permission of Tom Zito (www.zito.com). A portion of this work originally appeared in the New Yorker, “Page-Turner” (www.newyorker.com), as “Jim Harrison, Mozart of the Prairie” on March 30, 2016.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terry McDonell has edited thirteen magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Esquire and Rolling Stone. He is also a novelist (California Bloodstock) and poet (Wyoming) and has written and produced for film and television. Most recently he cofounded the website Literary Hub. He is president of the board of the Paris Review Foundation and serves on the Board of Overseers of the Columbia Journalism Review. He lives in New York City.
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