Information about Esquire (magazine)

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August 2005 issue of Esquire


Esquire is a men's magazine by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1933, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.

History

Esquire began as a racy publication for men, published by David A. Smart and Arnold Gingrich. [1] [2] It transformed itself into a more refined periodical with an emphasis on men's fashion and contributions by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the 1940s, the popularity of the Vargas Girls provided a circulation boost. In the 1960s, Esquire helped pioneer the trend of New Journalism by publishing such writers as Norman Mailer, Tim O'Brien, John Sack, Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. Under Harold Hayes, who ran it from 1961 to 1973, it became as distinctive as its oversized pages. The magazine shrank to the conventional 8½x11 in 1971.

Beginning in the late 1950s, Dorothy Parker wrote book reviews for Esquire, as noted by Daniel Itzkovitz:
Parker also produced a great deal of literary criticism, published over many decades in The New Yorker (under the title "Constant Reader") and, from 1958 to 1963, in Esquire. These reviews were often penned with the same unblinking brutality as her earlier drama reviews (of A.A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner, she said, "Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up"), although as often they were generously sensitive and enthusiastic. [3]

Fiction

From 1969 to 1976, Gordon Lish served as fiction editor for Esquire and became known as "Captain Fiction" because of the authors whose careers he assisted. Lish helped establish the career of writer Raymond Carver by publishing his short stories in Esquire, often over the objections of Hayes. Lish is noted for encouraging Carver's minimalism and publishing the short stories of Richard Ford. Using the influential publication as a vehicle to introduce new fiction by emerging authors, he promoted the work of such writers as T. Coraghessan Boyle, Barry Hannah, Cynthia Ozick and Reynolds Price.

Other authors appearing in Esquire at that time included William F. Buckley, Truman Capote, Murray Kempton, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ron Rosenbaum, Andrew Vachss and Garry Wills. The magazine's policy of nurturing young writing talent continued with Elizabeth Gilbert and others.

In February 1977, Esquire published "For Rupert - with no promises" as an unsigned work of fiction. This was the first time in Esquire's 44-year history that it did not identify a fiction writer. Readers speculated that it was the work of J. D. Salinger, the reclusive author best known for The Catcher in the Rye. Told in first-person, the story features events and Glass family names from the story "For Esmé with Love and Squalor". Gordon Lish is quoted as saying, "I tried to borrow Salinger's voice and the psychological circumstances of his life, as I imagine them to be now. And I tried to use those things to elaborate on certain circumstances and events in his fiction to deepen them and add complexity." [4]

Design

The magazine was a canvas for many artists and illustrators like Abner Dean, Santiago Martinez Delgado, George Petty, TY Mahon and John Groth among others. Art directors have included Jean-Paul Goude, Paul Rand, Roger Black and Samuel Antupit; also during the 1960's using the techniques of print advertising, legendary adman George Lois, the youngest inductee into the Art Directors Hall of Fame, designed clever, eye-catching Esquire covers, such as Sonny Liston as Santa Claus and Andy Warhol drowning in a can of soup to illustrate an article on the death of the avant-garde. Lois' covers raised Esquire's circulation in ten years from 500,000 to two million.

For many years, Esquire has published its annual Dubious Achievement Awards, lampooning events of the preceding year. As a running gag, the annual article almost always displayed an old photo of Richard Nixon laughing, with the caption, "Why is this man laughing?" However, the February 2006 "Dubious Achievement Awards" used the caption under a photo of W. Mark Felt, the former FBI official revealed in 2005 to be the "Deep Throat" Watergate source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Another running gag has been headlining one especially egregious achievement, "And then they went to Elaine's." (Elaine's is a popular restaurant in New York City.)

Esquire did not publish "Dubious Achievement Awards" for 2001 or 2002, but resumed them with the 2003 awards, published in the February 2004 issue.

Current Editors

David Granger - Editor in Chief

Peter Griffin - Deputy Editor

Mark Warren - Executive Editor

Lisa Hintelmann - Editorial Projects Director

Ryan D'Agostino, David Katz, Ross McCammon - Articles Editors

John Kenney - Managing Editor

Tyler Cabot - Associate Editor (fiction)

Richard Dorment - Associate Editor

Tim Heffernan, Buddy Kite, Peter Martin - Assistant Editors

Fran Kessler - Special Assistant to the Editor in Chief

Eric Gillin - Online Editor

Current Writers

Tom Chiarella, Cal Fussman, Chris Jones, Tom Junod, Scott Raab, John H. Richardson, Mike Sager - Writers at Large

Ted Allen, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Andrew Chaikivsky, Stacey Grenrock Woods, Chuck Klosterman, Ken Kurson, Robert Kurson, Andy Langer, Brian Mockehnhaupt, Charles P. Pierce, Daniel Voll, Barry Sonnenfeld - Contributing Editors

Listen to

International editions

References

1. ^ "Arnold Gingrich, 72, Dead; Was a Founder of Esquire", New York Times, July 10, 1976, Saturday. Retrieved on 2007-07-21. “Arnold Gingrich, one of the founders of Esquire magazine in 1933 and its principal guiding light in most of the years since then, died of cancer yesterday at his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Mr. Gingrich, who was given the title of founding editor earlier this year, was 72 years old.1976,%20Saturday"> 
2. ^ "Alfred Smart, Head Of Esquire Magazine.", New York Times, February 5, 1951, Monday. Retrieved on 2007-07-21.1951,%20Monday"> 
3. ^ Itzkovitz, Daniel. "Dorothy Rothschild Parker (1893-1967)." Jewish Virtual Library
4. ^ The Wall Street Journal (February 25, 1977).

See also

External links

This is a list of magazines primarily marketed to men. The list has been split into subcategories according to the target audience of the magazines. This list includes both 'adult' magazines as well as more mainstream ones.
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The Hearst Corporation is a privately-held American-based media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower in New York City, USA. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media.
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Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism.
If you are prevented from editing this page, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or .
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Arnold Gingrich (December 5, 1903 – July 9, 1976) was the founder with David A. Smart, and editor of the Esquire (magazine). He created the magazine in 1933 and remained its editor until 1961. [1]

Gingrich was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1903.
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David A. Smart (October 1892 – October 15, 1952) with his brother Alfred Smart (1895-1951), were the publishers of Esquire (magazine); and Coronet (magazine). [1] [2] [3]

Birth


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Arnold Gingrich (December 5, 1903 – July 9, 1976) was the founder with David A. Smart, and editor of the Esquire (magazine). He created the magazine in 1933 and remained its editor until 1961. [1]

Gingrich was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1903.
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Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway
Born: July 21 1899(1899--)
Oak Park, Illinois
Died: July 2 1961 (aged 63)
Ketchum, Idaho
Occupation: Writer and journalist
Genres: Lost Generation
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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald, photographed by Carl van Vechten in 1937
Born: September 24 1896(1896--)
St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
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Alberto Vargas (9 February 1896–30 December 1982) was a noted painter of pin-up girls and erotica. Born in Arequipa, Peru, Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez came to the United States in 1916 after studying art in Europe prior to World War I.
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New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as
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Norman Mailer

Born: January 31 1923 (1923--) (age 84)
Long Branch, New Jersey,
 United States
Occupation: Novelist
Nationality: American
Genres: Fiction
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Tim O'Brien (born October 1, 1946) is an American novelist who mainly writes about his experiences in the Vietnam War and the impact the war had on the American soldiers who fought there.
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John Sack (1930-2004) was an American literary journalist. He was the only journalist to cover each American war over half a century.

He was born to a Jewish family on 1930 March 24 in New York City.
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Gay Talese (born February 7 1932) is an American author. He wrote for The New York Times in the early 1960s and helped to define literary journalism or "new nonfiction reportage", also known as New Journalism.
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Thomas Kennerly Wolfe (born March 2, 1930 in Richmond, Virginia), known as Tom Wolfe, is a best-selling American author and journalist.
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Harold T. P. Hayes (?,1989) was a main architect of the New Journalism movement and an editor of Esquire magazine, from 1961 to 1973. Hayes subsequently authored three books on Africa -- The Last Place on Earth, Three Levels of Time, and
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Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker
Born: July 22 1893(1893--)
Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S.
Died: May 7 1967 (aged 75)
New York, New York, U.S.
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The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry and fiction. Originally a weekly, the magazine is now published 47 times per year with five (usually more expansive) issues covering two-week spans.
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A. A. Milne

Born: January 18 1882(1882--)
Hampstead, London, England
Died: January 31 1956 (aged 74)
Hartfield, Sussex, England
Occupation: Novelist, Playwright, Poet


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The House at Pooh Corner (1928) is the second volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne. It is notable for the introduction of the character Tigger, who went on to become a prominent figure in the Disney Winnie the Pooh franchise.
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Gordon Jay Lish (born February 11, 1934 in Hewlett, New York) is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, and Richard Ford.
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Raymond Carver

Born: May 25 1938(1938--)
Clatskanie, Oregon, United States
Died: July 2 1988 (aged 50)
Port Angeles, Washington, United States
Occupation: Writer
Nationality: American
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Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post-World War II Western Art, most
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Richard Ford
Born: January 16 1944 (1944--) (age 63)
Jackson, Mississippi
Occupation: Novelist, short story writer
Nationality:  United States
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T. Coraghessan Boyle
Pseudonym: T.C. Boyle
Born: November 2 1948 (1948--) (age 60)
Peekskill, New York
Occupation: Author
Nationality: American
Writing period: 1975 -
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Barry Hannah
Born: March 23 1942 (1942--) (age 65)
Alabama
Occupation: Writer, Professor
Genres: Literature

Barry Hannah
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<noinclude></noinclude> Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928, New York City), is an American writer, the daughter of William Ozick and Celia Regelson.

She earned her B.A.
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Reynolds Price (born February_1, 1933, as Edward Reynolds Price) is an American novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University.
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William Francis "Bill" Buckley, Jr. (born November 24, 1925) is an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted the television show Firing Line
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Truman Capote

Truman Capote, as photographed by Roger Higgins in 1959
Born: September 30 1924(1924--)
New Orleans, Louisiana
Died: July 25 1984 (aged 61)
Los Angeles, California
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