CASUAL
BROOKS, DAVID
Casual A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR I wouldn't mind editing a glossy lifestyle magazine, unless it meant having to write one of those editor's notes that go in the front. I'm talking about the...
...For example, Donna Warner, the editor in chief of Metropolitan Home, begins her current essay by declaring, "I have been trying to buy a pocketbook for months now...
...They usually contain about 600 words of text, with the editor's signature at the bottom to make them seem personalized...
...I detest the amputated limbs, branches lopped off abruptly at midsection, the pruner not having bothered to take the cut back to the trunk, or worse, simply having chopped off the top of the tree to contain its growth...
...Such practices leave stumps that aim heavenward and yet are hopelessly thwarted in their yearning...
...When I toured Burgundy on a bicycle trip organized by Butterfield and Robinson, I spent my days pedaling along vineyard roads and my nights learning about wine from local vintners...
...Yet if I were ever appointed editor of one of the monthly glossies, I don't think I could attractively describe the unstudied bliss that is my life...
...For other editors, the cri de coeur is more general, yet no less effective...
...For example, in the current issue of House & Garden, editor Dominique Browning invites us to join her in her crusade against bad pruning...
...Sound bites and media 'Cliff Notes' are the opiate of our short-attention-span masses...
...But the heart of Ms...
...We don't question...
...No, it's not fear of flying—it's the anticipation of adventure...
...Every time I get on a plane my heart races," writes the peppy but polite editor in chief of Food & Wine, Dana Cowin...
...Haven't we all, sister...
...Suddenly, we readers feel a surge of solidarity with this great-souled editor, a feeling of common humanity that makes us yearn for the bathroom remodeling tips that are presented in the pages that follow...
...It's the tone that makes these essays so daunting...
...In San Francisco I walked every inch of the Italian enclave of North Beach in search of divine espresso and homemade focaccia...
...That's a common enough problem, one supposes...
...For example, in this month's issue of Guitar Player magazine, editor in chief Michael Molenda laments the general decline in manners and morals...
...Warner's quandary, darn it, is that she's just too discerning...
...No, I had best maintain my discreet perch, hiding the masterpiece that is my life under the unassuming mantle of a weekly journal of conservative opinion...
...Often there's a picture of the editor alongside, making her (it's usually a woman) look sensational, yet casual...
...Naturally...
...Food for thought for amp-enthusiasts...
...There are several strategies for pulling off this delicate balance...
...My audience would come to resent me and my life of rarefied elegance (for example, the azalea survival rate of 13 percent in my backyard...
...Newhouse would blanch...
...She has to drop little hints about her own flawless existence, because nobody wants to read a lifestyle magazine edited by a schlump...
...We don't honor—or even have much knowledge of—the past...
...We don't read...
...I pursued my purse in Paris and went on a satchel search in San Francisco...
...I'm talking about the singlepage columns with names like "Welcome" and "From the Editor's Desk" that are supposed to establish rapport between editor and readers...
...With every sentence, the editor has to establish that she is perfect, yet not superior...
...She'll be posed at some jaunty angle, for that "just another afternoon lounging on the divan" look, and her hair will be magnificently styled, yet slightly disarrayed...
...Other editors build bonds with their readers by extending a cloak of social concern...
...And before you can say Ritz-Carlton, she has us jet setting around the world with her in search of the right shoulder strap...
...My problem is that I know exactly what I want (and I do mean exactly...
...We're living in the 'whatever' years, where avoiding responsibility is a national pastime...
...Newsstand sales would plummet...
...Sometimes the editor will write about a common foible, but solve it in a manner that conveys her inescapable glamour...
...I fear that the hints I would drop of my own fabulousness—my personal account at Amazon.com, my newly washed Camry—would be daunting to the average reader...
...What I most admire in this strategy is the faux inclusiveness, the language implying that of course we readers of this magazine all spend our days in Bay Area boutiques or on Parisian boulevards...
...Naturally, I've been all over Manhattan at length...
...Normally, I look forward to writing challenges...
...Yet we haven't become jaded or lost our ability to find delight in everyday things...
...I can almost hear the torment and accusation in those stumps—testimony to the cruel cancellation of life...
...But at the same time, she can't come off as Martha Stewart-compulsive, or as condescending toward those less effortlessly accomplished than she is...
...DAVID BROOKS...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 33
