MASSCULT AND MIDCULT
233
Yale College. All three are closely interrelated in his success: a
more sophisticated editor would have gotten out of step with
his
millions of readers, a less idealistic one would have lacked
the moral oomph to attract them, and he knew a "story" when
he saw one because what interested them interested
him.
9
9 An episode in my six years at
Fortune
is to the point here. In 1931-
1932 I was active on a literary magazine (along with two friends who in
1938 were to become, with me, editors of
Partisan Review:
F. W. Dupee
and George
L. K.
Morris) which had a circulation of about 600.
Thinking Luce would be pleased, and interested, by this evidence of
cultural enterprise on the part of one of his writers, I sent him up an issue
of
The
Miscellany,
as it was dismally called. His reaction was that I had
betrayed Time, Inc. "But Henry," I said- in those days, long before
Spo rts Illustrated
or even
Life,
manners were still pastorally simple at
Time, Inc., and Luce was merely
primus inter pares-"But
Henry, you
can't expect
Fortwne
to be my only interest. I give it a good day's work
from nine to five, that's what you pay me for, and it's my business what I
do in my spare time." This argument affected Luce much as his cynical
colleague's did Norman Rockwell. With his usual earnestness--he was and
I'm sure is a decent and honorable man, not at all the ogre the liberal
press portrays--Luce expounded quite a different philosophy :
Fortune
was
not just a job, it was a vocation worthy of a man's whole effort, and pay
and time-schedules weren't the point at all. "Why, the very name
Fortune
was thought up by so-and-so [one of my fellow editors] late one night on
the West Side subway between the 72nd and the 79th street stations [Luce
was a
Timeman
always]. This is a twenty-four-hour profession, you never
know when you may get an idea for us, and if you're all the time thinking
about some damn little magazine . .." "But Henry ..." It was an
impasse, since I looked on
Fortune
as a means and he as an end, nor had
it been resolved when I left the magazine years later.
(The second part
.of
this article will appear in the next issue)
