Fiction editor?

[Dan Stiffler]

On 2/17/04 12:42 AM, "Peggy Wilkins" <mozart@lib.uchicago.edu> wrote:

> I remember reading some time ago that PLAYBOY had let go of fiction
> editor Alice Turner; but what I hadn't realized was that there is no
> longer any named fiction editor.  Today I went looking down the
> masthead to see who was responsible for fiction and found--no one.  It
> seems that the last issue with this position listed was way back in
> May 2001.
> 
> I am left to wonder how any high quality general magazine can get by
> without a fiction editor.  Isn't this a problem?  So who is recruiting
> and reviewing the fiction then?  Does this mean that those at PLAYBOY
> have made a deliberate decision that fiction is no longer of
> sufficient importance to the magazine to warrant its own editor?
> 
> I just have to wonder how anyone could have made a decision like that.
> It's headed in a direction that is antithetical to what PLAYBOY has
> always been.

I have been crying about this, both privately and publicly (on the PML),
ever since it happened.  I became especially exercised when PLAYBOY turned
around and hired a "celebrity wrangler" with the advent of Kaminsky.

Let's be clear about one thing: a magazine with PLAYBOY's (former)
reputation and high pay scale does not need a fiction editor to get writers
to submit work for publication.  While the magazine certainly has dropped
the frequency of its fiction since the glory days (an average of three
stories per issue), it has nevertheless not stopped publishing fiction
altogether.  Many issues these days carry one story, some of them even
illustrated by art instead of photographs.  It's a nod to those PLAYBOY
readers who still read and who appreciate fine art; it's also a face-saving
gesture for a magazine that once prided itself on its content rather than
its celebrities.

The loss of a fiction editor means that PLAYBOY no longer scouts for the new
writers and--worse yet--no longer establishes a stable of writers.  Those of
us who became *readers* in part because of PLAYBOY did so because we began
to read regularly the work of writers like Herbert Gold, Jean Shepherd, and
Ian Fleming.

The primary job of a good fiction editor is to find young talent and
cultivate it for the sake of the writer, the reader, and the magazine.
Excepting the fiction contest, which is clearly a hold-over, PLAYBOY now
takes the celebrity approach to fiction: e.g., the much-ballyhooed (by
Kaminsky) publication of a T.C. Boyle story.

PLAYBOY has sold its literary soul to the devil of celebrity--a new Faustian
tale in the making.

regards,

Dan Stiffler