When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines

I’ve read them all including the Edward Enniful biography, Tina Brown Vanity Fair Diaries, Nicholas Coleridge The Glossy Years. They all intertwine and this is one of my favourites. Great read!

If you enjoy reading about the Manhattan power elite in the early years of the millennium (and I do) then this book is for you; an engaging read, filled with anecdote and character thumbnails by Graydon Carter, one of the country’s most successful mass market editors. Think of this as Mad Men updated to the turn of the twenty-first century, and centered on magazine publishing rather than advertising. To complain about the rampant name dropping in such a book misses the point. Name dropping is the whole reason for the exercise. The book is thus a memoir rather than an autobiography. There is a brief recounting of growing up in Canda in the 1950’s, but before too many pages we are off to the races with the co-founding of Spy magazine in New York. The dissolution of Carter’s second marriage (there was a very brief, youthful first union) and the meeting of his third wife and founding of a fresh family collectively gets two-thirds of one page. There are no photographs, but there are evocative full page black and white sketches by Eric Hanson preceding each chapter heading. Any memoir is an exercise in selective narration, and there are always cases where one considers what exactly may have been left out and why. For example, Mr. Carter is prone to citing long lists of people for praise (Great editors such as….; Talented writers including….; etc.) Here I always wonder who might have been deliberately omitted. Much more adroit than saying ”I never liked X” is to list all the terrific people you do like and simply leave X out. X will surely read the book, see the list, and feel the sting. Touché. He also notes in passing about the redoubtable Gore Vidal being a contributor over many years to Vanity Fair while Mr. Carter was the long-term editor there, but there is not a single anecdote about him. One wonders why. Besides possible outright omissions, there are also a number of instances between the lines that inform us about Mr. Carter’s perspective and point of view. He tells us plainly that he was hired on at Vanity Fair in 1992 at the salary of $600,000 per year (that’s about $1.4 million in 2025 dollars), so from that point on his is the story of a wealthy man. He also notes how tight money was for him prior to this, what with private school fees for the children and all, when he was making just $150,000 (that’s $380K in 2025). There is also a passing comment about how “so many kids these days” end up with careers “at a bank”. He also tells us that it was a misperception that he spent many evenings out during his Vanity Fair years, and that he only donned his dinner jacket two or three times a year. Yet a few pages later he notes that he dined at his favorite Manhattan restaurant about three nights a week. So, evidently, to him “evening out” applies only if costumed in evening wear. We are told by Carter that one year at the famous Vanity Fair Oscars party, he inadvertently arranged for Monica Lewinsky to be seated next to studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg, a noted Democratic Party supporter and friend of the Clintons, to Katzenberg’s considerable umbrage. Oops. Yet just a few pages previously we are told of the months and weeks of preparation that went into the planning of that lavish party each year, and the extreme attention to detail, especially vis-à-vis the guest list and seating arrangements (“treat each [table] as a separate dinner party”). One can draw one’s own conclusions. Lastly, since Mr. Carter is both a frequent author and a very successful editor it comes as a bit of a surprise to see on the title page the subheading “with James Fox” (the distinguished author of White Mischief among other things; his ex-wife is the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud). And positively shocking is that such a renowned editor would allow his memoir to be published without an index. All in all, then, an interesting and enjoyable read, though with some notable bits unsaid.

une auto-biographie sans grand intérêt.

When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter is a terrific read! Carter has a ton of great stories and he is a wonderful story teller. Carter once stood alone at the summit of the magazine world - the nexus of a challenging, fast changing business with a deep well of creative - photography, design, fashion, writing, etc. A fun to read, present day memoir is basically a well written, extended magazine article. Graydon Carter is a master of his genre, consequently his book is just hard to put down. Carter understood that most human endeavors are relationship driven, he has always gone the extra mile to nurture his business and creative relationships. Because of this his book is much more than a time-line of his successes. In fact, his mishaps are often the more interesting stories. The secret sauce here is the joy he gets from his family, his friendships and the vast array of people he crosses paths with over the years. Pretty much every bold face name over a quarter century passes through Vanity Fair’s pages, this book is rich with interesting people. It would be hard for a person under 40 years old to understand the power these publications once had. I would imagine a younger person is aware of what a magazine is but if they were to think of them at all it would be to wonder why on Earth their supermarket allows floor space for them. But once, not really that long ago, they informed us, entertained us and the inspired us. And when this world existed there were giants who chose what we would concern ourselves with on any given month. Among these giants of publishing there was one person who stood above the rest, Graydon Carter. It’s a terrific book!

Great book.