The adventures of a publisher during the last golden age of the magazines

Memorial
When the game was good: the adventures of a publisher during the last golden age of the magazines
Graydon Carter
Grove Press, $ 36.99

Changing one of the main publications of celebrities and policies of the world means that some enemies probably run.

Former Vanity Fair The publisher Graydon Carter, writing in his new delicious memories book When the game was goodHe says Donald Trump was one of these opponents. Ever since he wrote an unwary profile in the mid-1980s-one who described the real estate magnate as “short” -trump has had a persistent fixation with Carter and the magazine.

And, of course, the size of its phalanges.

Regular Broadsides on social media of the President of the United States attacked the monthly magazine and his publisher. “So down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!” He was one of countless tweets. Other vindictive billionaires also circled, such as the former owner of the Harrods Mohamed Al-Fayed department store, which had a voracious hunger to destroy Vanity Fair After a harmful exposure.

Carter says that this is why he learned to “always modify with (his) hat”, as he never knew when he could be out of the door. As an publisher who worked in some of the most admired stores during Halcyon Days of Magazine Publishing, it is an honest admission. Above all because many could assume that it was protected by sudden job losses or budgetary constraints for these deep publications.

Carter in the 90s at the height of Vanity Fairpopularity.

The 75-year-old Canadian was a “university waste” that “moved” in the publication of magazines thanks to a youthful passion for the word printed-and a lot of despair. Contributed to establishing a confused literary magazine, The Canadian reviewThis gave him some credibility in journalism but did not guarantee employment in his competitive world. It was only after implying a TIME At the end of a job interview (with an almost empty banking account that pushes him) on which Carter obtained a reporting concert to the weekly.

Work for TIME In the 70s it was like another world, in which the red -board magazine exercised an unparalleled political influence and provided its journalists with the legendary experience of a “expense life life”. But the ricchi and famous (and not simply reporting on them) was the ribs) who really attracted Carter, who then continued to found Spy magazine. The goal of the satirical monthly was simply that of “carpet bombs at 25,000 feet”.