The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution (33 page)

THE KING OF NEW YORK

F
or Clay Felker, “The Steps of the Pentagon” was the one that got away In early 1966 he had offered Mailer an assignment for the
New York World-Journal-Tribune
, the awkwardly titled new iteration of the
Tribune
that had resulted from a merger of that paper, the
World-Telegram
, and the
Journal-American
. Felker’s plan was for Mailer to file dispatches for the paper from Vietnam, reporting on whatever he saw fit. Mailer wasn’t sure if he was up to it; it had been more than twenty years since he had seen the horrors of combat up close. Resorting to a familiar negotiating tactic that he used whenever he felt unsure about a prospective assignment, Mailer played hardball with Felker and Jim Bellows; none of his stories could be cut for space or content, and all of them had to appear on the front page of the paper. It was only fair, Mailer reasoned, for the
Tribune
to make some concessions if Mailer was going to risk his life for the paper.

Contracts were drafted, and Mailer was set to go, but Jock Whitney’s paper, which had been losing money and readership to the
New York Times
and the city’s tabloids since the early 1960s, folded on May 5, 1967, in the midst of a labor dispute involving the newspaper merger. Felker’s great experiment in newspaper New Journalism seemed over as well.

Felker had been tipped off to the
Trib’s
demise by Jimmy Breslin, who called him the night before the announcement. Over drinks at the Monsignore bar, Breslin and Felker commiserated, toasted their achievements at the
Trib
, and pondered their next move. Breslin suggested that
they somehow keep
New York
magazine afloat. Too much of their blood and sweat had gone into the supplement, Breslin said. They couldn’t let
New York
, the best general-interest magazine in the city, die with the paper.
New York
was the best thing about the
Tribune
, the number one reason why nearly 83 percent of female readers and 75 percent of male readers bought the Sunday
Trib
every week. It was incumbent upon Felker to try to save it.

Felker was intrigued. Certainly no other newspaper would give him the creative latitude he had enjoyed at the
Trib
, and a return to the staid precincts of conventional journalism was unfathomable. “I saw the impact of the magazine,” said Felker. “I was committed to it. And I knew the formula was right.”

So he decided to take Breslin’s advice and attempt to establish a stand-alone magazine that would retain
New York’s
spirit and, he hoped, the same cast of contributors. For Felker, it would be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream: to finally own a magazine. “I never thought about the risk,” said Felker. “It had nothing to do with bravery. It was a dream I had and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try.”

In order to create a prototype, Felker enlisted Milton Glaser, the brilliant thirty-eight-year-old graphic designer who had contributed some freelance drawings to
New York
and had cowritten with Jerome Snyder a column called “The Underground Gourmet.” A graduate of New York’s Cooper Union and a Fulbright scholar, Glaser founded Push Pin Studios in 1954 along with fellow Cooper Union alumni Seymour Chwast, Ed Sorel, and Reynold Ruffins. Push Pin quickly established itself as a cutting-edge commercial design firm—“The Beatles of illustration and design,” according to writer Steven Heller—eschewing more lucrative advertising commissions for venturesome magazine, poster, and album cover art work, anything that might offer a creative challenge for the erudite and imaginatively fecund team of Glaser, Ruffins, and Chwast. The operative word was
eclectic;
Push Pin found ideas anywhere and everywhere—comic strips, Art Deco, Italian Renaissance painting, Victorian typography, even their own medicine cabinets—combining disparate design elements into an aesthetic of funhouse formalism that transformed the design industry. Push Pin’s images became lasting visual icons; Glaser’s famous 1967 poster of Bob Dylan, which combined a chiaroscuro profile topped by a Technicolor tangle of hair, became the most famous rock poster of the decade.

Glaser was no stranger to magazine publishing; he had helped produce fifteen issues of the
Push Pin Almanack
, a compendium of the firm’s work that was sent to potential clients as a bait for commissions. Felker thought of Glaser as the greatest designer of his time, an artist sensitive to the beauty and sensuality of typography, to how the careful juxtaposition of words and images could convey an attitude and a subtextual complexity that moved beyond the mere shilling of product. “Milton is a certifiable genius,” said Felker. “Before he undertakes a project, he takes the time to understand what the potential market might be for whomever it is directed, what message the client is trying to convey. He is a man for whom design with a point of view is crucial.”

The push and pull between Felker, the mercurial idea man, and Glaser, the oracular, intellectual guru, would result in one of the most fruitful collaborations between an editor and an art director in the history of American magazine publishing. “Glaser edited Clay in a way,” said Pete Hamill, an early contributor to
New York
. “If Clay had an idea, Milton would say, ‘That’s great, but what’s the illustration gonna be, what’s the headline?’ He helped Clay conceptualize notions into workable ideas.”

The idea was to emulate the editorial and graphic template of the
New York
supplement, the assumption being that those
Tribune
readers who harbored goodwill toward the defunct paper would migrate to the newsstand edition. But there was a stumbling block; Felker couldn’t use the name
New York
, which remained the property of Jock Whitney. Other names—
Metro, Gotham, The Express, The Metropolitan
, even
New York, New York—
were floated. Tom Wolfe suggested
New York Moon
, so when a new issue hit the stands, ads could proclaim, “The
Moon
is out!”

But Felker wouldn’t give up on
New York
so easily. It took six months of negotiations with the
World-Journal-Tribune’s
president, Matt Meyer, to acquire the name, during which time Glaser and Felker, with assistance from Jimmy Breslin, freelancer Gloria Steinem, and other
Trib
writers, continued to tinker with a prototype to present to potential investors. Other
Tribune
alumni, such as
New York
managing editor Jack Nessel and Eugenia Sheppard, the most respected fashion writer in the country, whose
Tribune
column had been syndicated in over a hundred papers, would also join the fold. “We didn’t know what we were doing at first,” said Felker. “We had to design for a smaller page now, the logo had to be stronger. It took us nearly a year to figure everything out.”

In November 1967 Meyer relented, and the name was purchased by Felker for the price of his severance pay—$6,575.00. With a mock-up in hand, Felker—accompanied in many instances by the comely Steinem, whom he used as a beard to soften up potential investors—began trying to raise money on Wall Street. The first targets were the lowest-hanging fruit. His old friend Armand Erpf a partner in the investment firm Loeb, Rhoades and Co., had always been intrigued by the publishing world, and the two of them had idly discussed the idea of starting up a city magazine for years. Now Felker was ready for Erpf to ante up.

Erpf was a major power broker, which made him an appealing partner for Felker. A patron of the arts, Erpf lived lavishly among the spoils of his Wall Street fortune. His Margaretville, New York, mansion was filled with modern art; its sculpture garden, with its giant Henry Moore bronzes, rivaled any domestic museum’s collection. “Armand was an utterly fascinating character,” said George Hirsch, who joined the
New York
team as publisher from Time-Life’s international division. “He used to have these dinner parties that were like salons, with people from the arts and finance coming together to discuss a wide range of subjects. He was a legendary figure in his time, and I don’t use that word lightly.”

Erpf and Felker made the rounds of Wall Street and the city’s cultural elite and, after many months of appeals, accrued a group of $25,000-or-more investors: Loeb, Rhoades CEO John L. Loeb, Great Western United Corp. Chairman William White Jr., mergers and acquisitions specialist Alan Patricof investment bankers Dan Lufkin and Bob Towbin, Joseph E. Seagram and Sons president Edgar Bronfman, Random House cofounder Bennett Cerf All told, Erpf scraped together $2.4 million (Erpf himself contributed $100,000). The magazine was a limited partnership, with participations distributed among its board of directors. Felker, publisher George Hirsch, and Milton Glaser represented management on the board, while Erpf and Patricof represented the money. Token amounts of stock were also distributed to contributing editors Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and “Adam Smith,” the pseudonym of financial writer and portfolio manager George J. W Goodman. Glaser cut Felker a deal for his time and office space: Glaser would work for $25,000 a year and provide rent-free offices for the magazine in Push Pin’s walk-up townhouse at 207 East 32nd Street.

In October 1967 Felker and his eight editorial staffers moved in,
bringing along some discarded furniture from the
Tribune’s
offices to fill it up, including John Whitney’s conference room chairs and Helen Rogers Reid’s mahogany desk. Felker and Hirsch worked out a production schedule that would allow them to begin publishing in April 1968. T. Swift Lockard was brought on as advertising director, and an aggressive direct mail campaign—with prizes as incentives, no less—was initiated in order to attract charter subscriptions. Half of the start-up investment was eaten up by the campaign, which resulted in sixty thousand subscribers.

“You get hooked on this city,” Clay Felker wrote in a mission statement sent to potential advertisers. “You want to revel in it and rail at it…. You want to participate in this city because it is alive…. New York is the quintessence of urban civilization…. New York is, in fact, the capital of the world…. We want to be the weekly magazine that communicates the spirit and character of contemporary New York.”

New York’s
strength would be good writing, according to Felker, because “it’s what reading is all about.” The magazine would provide a multifarious view of the city: “Jimmy Breslin’s New York, and Tom Wolfe’s New York, and Adam Smith’s Wall Street, and Eugenia Sheppard’s Seventh Avenue and Harold Clurman’s theatres …”

Felker printed 250,000 copies of the first issue, which sold for 40 cents and featured a color-saturated cover shot by Jay Maisel of the Manhattan skyline as seen from the East River. It didn’t stray far from the
Tribune
iteration of the magazine, but it had more heft. Lockard and his team wrangled up enough clients for the premiere issue to produce sixty-four ad pages, with advertisers paying $1,250 for a black-and-white page and $2,010 for a color page.

There were subtle but significant design changes. The elegant
New York
logotype, based on the Caslon typeface, became thicker and bolder; the “scotch rule” border that enclosed the logotype on the old
New York
was eliminated. Instead, Glaser placed one scotch rule above the logo, and left space above it for “teasers” that would clue in readers to the magazine’s editorial content each week. The scotch rule would be used as a unifying design element within the magazine as well. Many of the popular features of the
Trib-era New York
were retained, such as Glaser and Snyder’s “Underground Gourmet” column, which scoped out the best ethnic cuisine in the city; and the Felker creation “Best Bets,” a two-page
spread of coveted products that became the first destination in the magazine for many of its female readers.

Felker and Erpf decided to launch with a splash and held a breakfast party at the Four Seasons restaurant on Monday, April 1, a week before the publication date. Two hundred copies were distributed to press and local luminaries; Mayor John Lindsay spoke of the challenges of publishing a magazine that captured the pulse of the city. “The people here met that challenge once and now meet it again. We of the city are grateful today to salute the rebirth of the magazine … a magazine called
New York
.”

But even as the city’s best and brightest were toasting the second coming of
New York
, managing editor Jack Nessel felt his palms getting sweaty, his pulse quickening. Monday was not a day to fritter away; the staff was already a day behind on the next issue. While Lindsay sang
New York’s
praises, an anxiety-ridden Nessel sneaked out to draft the production schedule.

Felker’s star writers picked up where they had left off at the
Trib
. Jimmy Breslin hopped on the commuter train that travels from Grand Central Station to Connecticut and wrote about the Harlem tenement dwellers that black-loafered commuters passed by every day on their way home; Tom Wolfe dissected the class distinctions of New York accents; Gloria Steinem retraced the New York travels of Ho Chi Minh; Adam Smith described the latest trend to afflict Wall Street heavies, car phones. Back-of-the-book reviews by classical music critic Alan Rich, movie critic Judith Crist, and theater critic Harold Clurman rounded out the issue, as well as a crossword puzzle by Stephen Sondheim.