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 single page columns with names like “Welcome” and “From the Editor’s Desk” that are supposed to establish rapport between editor and readers. They usually contain about 600 words of text, with the editor’s signature at the bottom to make them seem personalized. Often there’s picture of the editor alongside, making her (it’s usually a woman) look sensational, yet casual. 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.
It’s the tone that makes these essays so daunting. With every sentence, the editor has to establish that she is perfect, yet not superior. She has to drop little hints about her own flawless existence, because nobody wants to read a lifestyle magazine edited by a schlump. 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.
There are several strategies for pulling off this delicate balance. Sometimes the editor will write about a common foible, but solve it in a manner that conveys her inescapable glamour. 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.” That’s a common enough problem, one supposes. But the heart of Ms. Warner’s quandary, darn it, is that she’s just too discerning. “My problem is that I know exactly what I want (and I do mean exactly).” And before you can say Ritz-Carlton, she has us jet setting around the world with her in search of the right shoulder strap. “I pursued my purse in Paris and went on a satchel search in San Francisco. Naturally, I’ve been all over Manhattan at length.” Naturally!
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. Yet we haven’t become jaded or lost our ability to find delight in everyday things. “Every time I get on a plane my heart races,” writes the peppy but polite editor in chief of Food & Wine, Dana Cowin. “No, it’s not fear of flying — it’s the anticipation of adventure. 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. In San Francisco I walked every inch of the Italian enclave of North Beach in search of divine espresso and homemade focaccia.” Haven’t we all, sister.
Other editors build bonds with their readers by extending a cloak of social concern. For example, in the current issue of House & Garden, editor Dominique Browning invites us to join her in her crusade against bad pruning. “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. . . . I can almost hear the torment and accusation in those stumps — testimony to the cruel cancellation of life.” 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.
For other editors, the cri de coeur is more general, yet no less effective. For example, in this month’s issue of Guitar Player magazine, editor in chief Michael Molenda laments the general decline in manners and morals. “Sound bites and media ‘Cliff Notes’ are the opiate of our short-attention-span masses. We don’t read. We don’t question. We don’t honor — or even have much knowledge of — the past. We’re living in the ‘whatever’ years, where avoiding responsibility is a national pastime.” Food for thought for amp-enthusiasts.
Normally, I look forward to writing challenges. 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. 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. 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). Newsstand sales would plummet. S.I. Newhouse would blanch.
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.
DAVID BROOKS
