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TYPEFACES the Man of Mode thing, but human intellect and heart our immediate concern. worried about what lies nearest us, take over as we grow to adulthood, But first things first. A rampant how can we hope to bring peace and where instinct runs dry in the lower school board or laggardly snow remov­ justice to the world? animals. The result is family—which, al touches us where it hurts the most if it is healthy, grows to gather in —right in the quotidian—and abor- ]ane Greer edits Plains Poetry Jour­ neighbor, city, state, nation, world, in hon, cited seven out of 11 times, nal, which prints no letters to the hope if not always in joy. Thus we do touches us in the intimacies of our editor. write about issues long-removed from bodies and moral beliefs. If we aren't TYPEFACES The Man of Mode cal's genealogy in Nothing But People: The Early Days at 'Esquire (Crown, "Man at his best" is both the slogan 1971). Gingrich credits Gentlemen's and promise of Esquire magazine. Quarterly with breaking through jour­ "Best," in this context, turns out to nalists' indifference to male fashion; mean all that money can buy in the "Almost the only editorial treatment way of automobiles, wristwatches, ever accorded to fashions for men in adoring women, and clothes. Fernan­ the pages of American magazines and do Lamas' paradoxical aphorism newspapers had been derisory" (one (taken seriously by a dull-witted comic more reason to long for the good old who parlayed it into a career) sums it days). up: it doesn't matter how you feel, so With remarkable candor, Gingrich long as you look good. For Esquire, admits that planning for Esquire fo­ what's important about Jack Kemp is cused chiefly on ways "to add more that he has "grown more attractive and more sugarcoating to the bitter pill with age." In the same issue, readers that . , the fashion content repre­ could retreat from the complexities of sented." The magazine had to be modern life by looking into a short made "hair-chested" and "substantial story by Bob Shacochis, a writer whose enough to deodorize the lavender tales are filled with "the melancholy of whiff coming from the fashion pages." self-exile, the sea air, and the smell of The editors planned from the begin­ rum," or by turning the remarkable ning to seek out gifted writers and number of pages devoted to showing talented athletes not so much because and telling us why smart men in they were interested in fiction or foot­ Washington and New York (including ball, but because they knew of no the U.S. senators, top government other way to make a men's fashion officials, and national broadcasters show in print acceptable to "the cream who posed as models for the pictures) of the great middle class between the Esquire treats as legitimate are now wearing sweaters as "the new nobility and the peasantry." Ernest subject matter all the normal weekend alternative." Hemingway and Gene Tunney were activities of civilized adult Esquire was born with a fascination just part of the "sugarcoating." life. Its only aim ... is with men's fashion in its genes: all of In only a few years after its first issue amusement. It's flippant, its ancestors—including The Man of (1933), Esquire was in the limelight. cynical, frequently superficial, Today, Gentlemen's Quarterly (old The editors explained their strategy and sometimes somewhat brash version). Apparel Arts, Club & Cam­ and its success with a jaunty noncha­ in its sophistication. Perhaps pus, and The Observer—were essen­ lance in a promotional book. The that's why some of you have tially haberdashery journals. Esquire's Third New Year: An Etude in the Key told us that you "don't want it founding editor, Arnold Gingrich of Frankness, sent to advertisers in in your home." . The best (who began his career as an advertising 1935: days of a magazine last only as manager), looks back at the periodi­ long as the period for which it JUNE 1986/43 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED including Bill Weintraub and Meyer happens to hold the spotHght. the 50's could turn to important things Levin—otherwise engaged, there re­ It's a lot like a musical comedy —like the Hawaiian shirts and Roman mained no "strong voice to insist on a routine. All the pretty girls are striped pants that were suddenly all the restoring and reinvigorating of the lined up across the stage. One rage with fashion-conscious men. magazine's original fashion policy." steps out and does her specialty Cowboys and shamuses also gave They also gave up any "pretense at and, for a moment, attention is way to brand-name pieces by Aldous maintenance of the original literary focused on her, along with the Huxley, Tennessee Williams, Orson standards." Cheap Western and detec­ spotlight. Then she steps back Welles, William Faulkner, Albert tive fiction replaced the work of Hem­ into line. Camus, and Truman Capote. But be­ ingway, Dreiser, and Fitzgerald. sides returning the magazine to the The dancing girl metaphor did not •; But in 1952, the Esquire manage­ pinnacles of fashion and fiction, the fit the Esquire of the 30's nearly so well ment brought Gingrich back to the editorial policy during the 50's devel­ as it did the Esquire of the 40's, when helm and gave him a mandate to oped some provocative new twists. the magazine became decidedly less revitalize the magazine, whose circu­ Gingrich explains that in trying to literary and far more titillating. Ging­ lation was beginning to show the ef­ restore life to the magazine, he gave rich explains the decision to include fects of a decade of drift and confu­ encouragement "to the ideas ... no more and larger "pinups" as an effort sion. Gingrich made it a top priority to matter how harebrained or wild-eyed, to "curry favor with the War Produc­ get the girly pictures out of the maga­ of the young editors." Harold Hayes tion Board," which gave more paper to zine, and he credits Hugh Hefner with (recruited by Gingrich in 1956 as "a those magazines that could show they helping him accomplish that goal. Southern liberal") explained in a pref­ were trying "to enhance the morale of Hefner worked for Esquire in the post­ ace to an Esquire anthology that the the troops." The same winds of war war years, but left in 1950 to begin his editors took it as their task to challenge that blew in the partially unclad young spectacularly successful Playboy— "the banality of the Fifties." "From the women also blew out most of the "the magazine that is what Esquire raspberry to the hoax . and occa­ nattily dressed male models, as war­ used to be." Playboy's success only sionally with some loss of dignity, the time austerity enforced a Spartan sim­ made Gingrich even more "deter­ idea was to suggest alternate possibili­ plicity on the world of male fashion. mined to work the opposite side of the ties to a monolithic view. And how Gingrich left in 1946 to become street . [by] ridding Esquire of any monolithic it was! The passivity of the Esquire's European correspondent, last vestigial traces of the girly flavor." Fifties was shared by garage mechanics and, with the other key founders— With the girls gone, the Esquire of and college presidents." Things moved fast in the 60's, and it was hard to stay out in front. Within BOOKS IN BRIEF four years after publishing Lee Os­ wald's letters to his mother and Tom Loving With a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women by Tania Modleski, New York: Methuen; $6.95. What can be worse than a Harlequin romance? Try feminist hterary Wicker's reverential tribute to the fall­ criticism of Harlequin romances. en President, Esquire brought out Timothy Leary's paean to LSD and Politics and Tyranny: Lessons in Pursuit of Freedom by Milton Friedman, ef al., San Jean Genet's graphic account of the Francisco: Pacific Institute; $7.95. Friedman and Company explain the evils of government 1968 Democratic Convention; stories spending and the ineffectiveness of the Reagan Administration in combating them. on topless bars, on the "New Senti­ The Responsibihty ofHermeneutics by Roger Lundin, Anthony C. Thiselton, and Clarence mentality" of sharpness and self- Walhout, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/Paternoster; $8.95. A serious attempt to apply the gratification, and on "The Life and latest ideas on literary criticism to the reading of Scripture. Paul de Man, deconstruction, and Death of a Hippie" (one James reader-response theory arc bad enough on Wordsworth. Imagine what they can do to the Sermon on the Mount or the story of Job. "Groovy" Hutchinson, murdered with a wealthy girlfriend); and inevitably an Rewriting Enghsh: Cultural Politics of Gender and Class by Janet Batsleer, ef a/., New York: issue devoted to "The Beautiful Peo­ Methuen; $11.95. A by-now-predictable argument that English studies should focus on ple: Campus Heroes for '68/69," with women's issues, working-class literature, and all things wild and wonderful. features on the hi jinks of Herbert Mar- Too Many People? A Problem in Values by Christopher Derrick, San Francisco: Ignatius. A cuse, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Christian rejoinder to Malthusian propaganda. Zinn. Gingrich soon sensed a tremendous People in Space: Policy Perspectives for a "Star Wars" Century, edited by James E. Katz, "generation gap" between him and his New Brunswick: Transaction Books; $14.95. Looking at everything from particle-beam weaponry to UFO's, a dozen contributors assess humanity's future in the stars.
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