Art Cooper (1937-2003) was the editor
of Condé Nast’s GQ magazine from 1983-2003.
In January 2003, he
was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. (Yes,
there is such a thing.) He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Cooper resigned in 2003 amid rumors the
corporation was going to dump him for someone younger.
And now his name pops
up again.
Adam Sachs’s
installation as Saveur editor-in-chief prompted the 29 September
2014 New York Times article, Legacy of a Venerated Magazine Editor Lives
Large on the Newsstand.” It noted Cooper’s greatest impact may be “the
small army of top magazine editors whose careers he groomed.”
“He
made it clear we were going to be editors in chiefs someday,” one of Cooper’s
army told the Times reporter (Christine Haughney), adding, “He believed in you even when you
didn’t.”
This
is a lovely remembrance and, perhaps, it harbors an element of truth.
But
there is another record of Cooper’s legacy that must be noted. It is found in The
Red Devil (pub. Crown, 1999) by Katherine Russell Rich (1955-2012) The Times called
the book a “gritty, darkly comic memoir of her protracted battle with breast
cancer.”
Kathy
Rich found her lump in 1988 when she
was 32, and working as an editor at GQ. (She had been recruited by
Cooper from her slot as a respected Seventeen editor.) In Red Devil,
she describes several interactions with Art Cooper. In her book, she refers to him only as
“the editor."
While
recovering from treatments, she noticed that the editor was quietly, constantly
excluding and ignoring her. She saw the editor collecting other senior staff
editors for lunch. Her proposals went unanswered. A writer she pursued for the
magazine was given to another editor. She was being treated as an un-person.
After months of virtually no conversation between
Rich and the editor, Cooper summoned her for a performance review. This is what Rich wrote.
“Sit
down,” he said gruffly. He didn’t look like a man who wanted to talk. He looked
like a man who was under orders from Personnel to deliver the corporate report
cards.
“I
don’t know what to say to you,” he began. “I can’t review your work. You
haven’t done much this year. I haven’t wanted to give you things to do. Partly
for humanitarian reasons. But partly because I wanted to be sure that they got
done.”
But
they would have, I assured him. And you can begin now, I said. Smiling, he said
he would. “You know,” he chortled. “I really felt bad for you. No one here
wanted anything to do with you because you reminded them they could die.”
This
encounter shook her because, she wrote, “the editor had fired people for
lighter infractions than being walking reminders of death.”
In
1992, the other shoe dropped.
“Close
the door,” he said, glancing up from a manuscript. “Have you spoken with
Personnel?”
I
had. They were giving me an extra month to look. But they weren’t giving me any
reason.
“Why
am I being fired?” I asked.
“I
don’t know,” the editor said, looking at me hard. “Why do you think?”
I
shrugged to signal that if he didn’t know, neither did I.
“Do
you realize that by firing me, you could be leaving me without insurance?” I
asked. I wanted this to be spelled out
He
nodded.
“Do
you realize that if my cancer came back, it could bankrupt me and my whole
family?”
He
nodded again.
“And
you don’t care?”
He
shook his head slowly. No.
What
more was there to say? I was out first of the year. . .
In early Spring, a
former colleague called. The editor had submitted two of my pieces with a third
and had gotten his first National Magazine Award nomination.
Let’s not be too
quick to venerate our editors.
Magazine publishing
really is just a small town, populated by cannibals. It attracts careerists,
narcissists and other self-important sorts.
After its heartfelt
homage to Cooper, the Times article ends with Adam Sachs’s experience
". . . he was a senior staff writer
at GQ before Mr. Cooper “strongly encouraged” him to leave the magazine. That
prompted him to become a freelance food and travel writer.
“It certainly hurt my feelings at
the time,’” Mr. Sachs said. “But it was probably a good kick in the rear. Maybe
Art knew what he was doing, or it was a happy accident that set me on a path.’”
Yeah!
Right! Tough love!
Was
it that Cooper was so busy grooming his future fellow elite that he didn’t have
time to ease the afflicted; that he didn’t have time to acknowledge the talent,
worth and humanity of someone who wanted to contribute and wanted out of the
isolation; that he didn’t have time to set a good example for his staff — the
future editors of America?
He
had the time. He didn’t have the empathy. He didn’t have the soul.
