Graydon Carter on life “When the Going Was Good”

The former editor of Vanity Fair for 25 years, Graydon Carter is a family man, father of five grown children, better known for his signature white hair and urbane elegance, never without a handkerchief – Hermès, he has 30 of them (“This is my greatest luxury,” he says) – chronicler of the privileged set of which he is a member, though not born to it. 

Growing up middle class, in Ottawa, he credits a mix of Canadian affability and inner strength for his enduring career at the top of the glittering world of magazines. “Canadians are not weak,” he said. “We may look affable on the outside, but if you can survive playing hockey on an open rink in 30° weather, you develop a spine.”

He tells the story of watching a super liner flitting by: “And I could see in the light, the sort of the amber light of the window, a very attractive couple, and they were sort of dressed up having, I guess, cocktails or dinner. And I realized I wanted to be on that side of the window rather than this side I was standing on.”

I asked, “Before that, would you have described yourself as having driving ambitions?”

“No. I had absolutely no ambition whatsoever,” he replied.

He left college before graduating, but with a passion for magazines, and in 1978, set his sights on New York. It was summer in the city. He was not dressed for success. “I had a Canadian tweed coat on, and it was about as thick as this chair. And I’ve never felt heat like this in my entire life. And I was drenched in sweat. Water was squirting out of me! So, I had the interview. But he said, ‘Why don’t you just sit in front of the air conditioner for a while?’ So I sat there for a half an hour … trying to cool down.”

He left with a job that launched a career in the golden age of magazines, as he writes in his memoir: “When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines” (to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press). 

And the timing was golden, too. In 1985, New York City was ripe for satire. “With the invention of the investment banker, everything changed in New York,” Carter said. “People were showing off their money in a big way.”

He was a cofounder of Spy magazine, cheeky and fearless. Among his subjects: A real estate mogul named Donald Trump. “I had met him a couple of years before,” Carter said. “I’d been assigned to do a story on him. I hung around with him for three weeks, and I wrote the story, and I did point out that he was sort of a sharpy from Queens and he was trying to make it. But I pointed out in the story that his hands appeared to be too small for his body. Well, he hated that.

“And so, at Spy we came up with funny epithets for people, and in Trump’s case we called him a ‘short-fingered vulgarian’ every time we mentioned his name. And he hated that!”

And yes, Carter has dual citizenship – American and Canadian. I asked, “How does that feel at this point in time?”

“Especially in the last month or so, I feel very strongly Canadian, and very proud, and very happy that Mark Carney is the prime minister,” Carter replied.

The New York Observer was a weekly Manhattan newspaper memorable for the color of paper it was printed on, when Carter saw possibilities, leaving Spy in 1991. “I thought, ‘I can make this a thing.'”

And in a year, the Observer could be seen in the offices of major editors all over Europe (because Carter had sent them). But a visiting American publisher took note.  “And he comes back thinking, ‘This is a huge international hit!'” laughed Carter.

S.I. Newhouse, head of the Condé Nast magazine empire, made Graydon Carter editor of Vanity Fair, where the going was very good indeed. “I flew the Concord more than 60 times,” Carter said. “When you went to another city you had a car and driver. You had a car and driver in New York. It was very heady. But at the same time, it was all predicated on you making a successful magazine.”

Through the magazine, and his own outsized persona, Carter was often described as a tastemaker quietly shaping pop culture — someone making who’s who, and saying what’s what. He was responsible for bringing Monica Lewinsky back for a reset … revealing the identity of “Deep Throat” … squiring Diana, Princess of Wales in London … the worldwide exclusive worldwide introductions of Tom Cruise and his family, and of Caitlyn Jenner.

But Jennifer Aniston was the all-time best-selling cover. “You look back now, you think, ‘What was all the fuss?'” he said. “But she had just broken up with Brad Pitt, and this is her talking about him, and crying.”

A successful magazine is something greater than sum of subscription and newsstand sales. For 31 years, Vanity Fair has been synonymous with Oscar party. Hollywood’s party of the year was Graydon Carter’s magic. “It became not how to get people in, but how to keep people out,” he said.

So, what is it about parties that he is so good at? “We had no VIP sections,” he explained. “Once you got in, everybody’s the same. And with a party, it’s about the right curation of people.”

“Curation is very important to everything you’ve done,” I said.

“If it’s interesting to me, I think it might be interesting to others,” he replied.

Graydon Carter resigned from Vanity Fair in 2017 and retired to the south of France. It didn’t take.

His idea of retirement was to start something brand new. “I wanted to produce something that’d be like a dispatch,” he said.

Air Mail is an email newsletter. It began six years ago, and is said to have half a million subscribers in 219 countries. Filled with thoughtful features and travel and shopping recommendations (all carefully curated, of course), Carter, at 76, is still finding ways to bring in readers. 

The impresario says he has “stumbled” a lot along the way. Asked to define “stumble,” Carter replied, “Life is a bone yard of minor mistakes and fumbles.”

“I’ve always felt that introductions would be far more interesting if you skipped the highlights … it’s the lowlights where everything happens,” I said.

“100%,” said Carter. “Successes are really boring. Failures are much more fascinating.”

      
READ AN EXCERPT: “When the Going Was Good” by Graydon Carter

      
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Story produced by Mary Raffalli. Editor: Ed Givnish.