Esquire's special 90-year anniversary issue this month barely acknowledges the magazine' s illustrious past.
The magazine arrived in October 1933, the depths of the Depression, with its founder and publisher Arnold Gingrich frankly declaring that the publication was "by, of and for men only."
Writers John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner Jr., Erkine Caldwell, Dashiell Hammett and even Douglas Fairbanks Jr. appeared in the inaugural issue. Golf great Bobby Jones and heavyweight champion Gene Tunney contributed articles.
This year's special October issue salutes Hemingway, whose association with Esquire in its early years made the magazine a success, and Gay Talese, whose New Journalism classic "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" first appeared in the magazine.
But the magazine doesn't mention famous Esquire writers Tom Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Michael Herr, John Sack, Tim O'Brien, Norman Mailer and Terry Southern. None of George Lois' famous 1960s covers is reproduced. The great years of editor Harold Hayes, and the later reigns of Clay Felker and David Granger are ignored.
Current editor Michael Sebastian in his introduction to the special October anniversary issue does cite Gingrich, going on to explain that he decided to look to the future instead of rehashing the magazine's glorious history.
A special feature predicts which ideas and events might emerge over the next 90 years. Singer Post Malone, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, emerging actor Barry Koeghan and writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of the recently acclaimed novel 'Chain-Gang All-Stars," are profiled among 90 leaders expected to influence the next few decades. The magazine's boys club continues.
Longtime Esquire readers and Hemingway lovers will enjoy writer David Coggins' appreciation of the writer, who published "The Old Man and the Sea" and other famous stories in the magazine.
Coggins looks back on how Hemingway was able to purchase his beloved fishing boat the Pilar because of a $3,000 payment from Gingrich, giving the magazine exclusive rights to Hemingway's work.
For the article, Coggins visited Hemingway's home in Havana and the dry-docked Pilar, upon which Hemingway entertained well-known writers and actors on deep-sea fishing trips.
The 91-year-old Talese in a "What I've Learned" essay tied to the recent release of his book "Bartleby and Me: Reflections of An Old Scrivener" revisits his career.
Although it's undoubtedly a generational gap, I find that today's Esquire lacks the spark of the old magazine, which was one of the journalistic pillars of my youth.
But the magazine keeps going at 90 years old. I never thought it would last that long.
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