COVER STORY - APRIL ISSUE
GQ's Man For All Reasons
> BY JACK FREEMAN
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

But it isn't merely Cooper's ability to maintain GQ as a cash cow for Newhouse that explains his longevity at Condé Nast; equally important, he has created an editorial sensibility that's influenced an entire generation of American males. Men's magazines are a particular volatile field, with titles turning increasingly raunchy in order to entice readers. Cooper‹who's not unfamiliar with skin from his surreal year as Penthouse's editor a long time ago‹doesn't have to resort to flesh to keep his readers; their loyalty springs from the nice mix of articles, service features and fashion spreads that Cooper dishes up each month.

Readers are also well served by Cooper's canny eye for spotting a big story when he sees it and matching the right writer for the assignment. Some years ago, in a conversation with James Ellroy, he learned that the novelist's mother had been murdered when he was 10 years old, and that the killer was never caught. Ellroy told Cooper that he'd been obsessed with that murder. Cooper coaxed Ellroy into writing a nonfiction piece for GQ‹the novelist's first magazine article‹and the acclaimed article eventually became a best selling book in 1996, My Dark Places.

And there is Cooper's knack for discovering what he calls "new voices." He had noticed the wine columns of Alan Richman at Esquire, and persuaded him to move to GQ. Richman soon developed into a formidable food writer, with a voice that Cooper characterizes as "arrogant and self-deprecating at the same time." Richman has fattened GQ's cupboard of prizes with eight James Beard Awards for Restaurant Reviewing. That's eight in the last 10 years. (Cooper's personal haul of awards is enviable, too. He's won big ones such as Adweek's "Editor of the Year.")

There is also Cooper's nurturing of young in-house talent. Lucy Kaylin is a case in point. She started off as an editorial assistant at GQ. Under Cooper's tutelage, Kaylin began writing celebrity profiles. Now there is general agreement that she's one of the best writers in the magazine business. Sonny Mehta, the president and editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf Inc., has often complimented Cooper on his nurturing of unknown writers.

Kaylin, Richman and Ellroy, of course, are generously paid by Cooper. (Word has it that each makes upward of $100,000 at GQ.) But when asked what special emoluments he offers to writers who do particularly well, Cooper comes up with a most unusual response: "Lunch at The Four Seasons." Really? "Yes," he says, "they all want to sit with me at that banquette and observe that lunchtime theater of celebrities and corporate tycoons. More than anything else, writers want to be taken by me to The Four Seasons." They also want the choicest assignments. And since Sept. 11 last year, those assignments have included what Cooper calls "the biggest story of our time." But when he tries to "make sense" of the story of America's war on terrorism, he feels frustrated that, as a monthly, his magazine can play only a supporting role. "We're not setting the agenda," he said, "but we can offer some perspective." And he is making sure the magazine's writers are sticking with the story.

Cooper recalled how he watched the Sept. 11 attacks on a television set in his office overlooking Times Square, the somber mood of that day, the rumors and the confusion, the frustration of realizing that GQ's October issue had already gone to press.

"We were so naïve," he said referring to American society in general, "and then our world became a more dangerous place, a more anxious place." What we emerged from, he added, "was not exactly the 'me'" decade, but something pretty close to it." Now, the era that spawned the movie Wall Street‹with its glorification of greed, its junk bonds and corporate takeovers‹ "seems another age."

"We were so very insular," he said. "How much did we know about Islam? I don't think we were paying the right kind of attention." On the other hand, Cooper does not see what is happening now as a religious war or a "clash of civilizations." Indeed, he sees it as more than just a matter of fighting a war. "Where is the humanitarian side of a US policy toward the Muslim world?" he asked. And, he continued, while we're focusing on Al Qaeda and the Taliban, "What about the rest of the Muslim world? What have we done to win their hearts and minds? Arab attitudes toward the US are chilling."

Clearly, he said, even though our most popular export is movies, "we haven't done enough to explain ourselves" to the rest of the world. The image of the United States is not what it should be. "There is a lot of envy‹of our open society, the way we treat women, the way we live." We have become aware, he said, of our own need to better understand other cultures and peoples.

Cooper has sent reporters to Lebanon and Afghanistan, started a column on the "shadow war" and investigated the suicide bombers, all of it "trying to make sense" of what is happening. "This is not our main purpose," he said, "but we are journalists after all."

Cooper's journalistic credentials date back to 1964, when he went to work for the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Patriot as a political reporter after graduating from Penn State University. At college, he had wanted to be a novelist in the mold of Ernest Hemingway and John O'Hara. He even fancied himself as a war correspondent. But military service beckoned, and Cooper became a communications intelligence officer in the United States Navy. He went on to Time magazine as a correspondent, and then to Newsweek as an editor and cultural critic. Cooper later spent a year as editor of Penthouse magazine and five years as editor of Family Weekly, where he had opportunities to interview US presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan. Photographs showing him at the White House grace his office, inviting impressed looks from visitors.

He took over the top job at GQ in 1983, just a few years after Condé Nast had purchased the magazine (then devoted almost exclusively to men's fashions) from the company that publishes Esquire. Cooper‹whose wife, Amy, was editor-in-chief of another Condé Nast magazine, the now discontinued Mademoiselle‹gave GQ a whole new look, taking the fashion models off the cover and replacing them with celebrities and athletes, and stressed not only the quality of its visual elements but its writing as well. "We started out with the radical notion," he said a few years later, "that men of fashion and style would be interested in stylish writing too. I wanted a magazine that would be known for its reporting and for the elegance of its writing."

He got the elegance and in-depth reporting from well-known Pulitzer-winning writers such as David Halberstam and Ron Powers, and Wilfrid Sheed, and the late Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler. In fact, Cooper's very first issue as editor-in-chief of GQ‹November 1983‹featured Halberstam's memorable retrospective on the 20th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

"I still love to publish established writers," Cooper said, alluding to his constant pursuit of boldfaced bylines. He recently got Michael Paterniti to come on board.

And are there any writers he'd love to snare?

"If there are two writers I really covet," Cooper said, "they would be Anthony Lane and Christopher Hitchens. They are both under contract and very well paid."

Lane writes on films for The New Yorker; Hitchens writes extensively for Vanity Fair and The Nation. Cooper sees in such catches not simply the delight of snatching writers away from other magazines. GQ, he feels, offers a special home for them; and writers with special sensibilities‹even when their world view differs from Cooper's‹undeniably enrich the magazine's editorial aggregate. One of his journalistic mentors, the late Harold Hayes‹who was editor of Esquire from 1962 to 1972‹taught him the value of nourishing a magazine with fresh talent on a continuous basis, what Cooper now calls "the flowering of fresh voices."

"If this magazine connects with readers the way Harold Hayes' Esquire did, nothing would gratify me more," he said.

For all of his journalistic concerns, however, Cooper is quick to point out that GQ's mission is not at all the same as that of other magazines. "I don't want the magazine to be overly serious," he said, adding that its advertising tag line is, "It's good to be a man," and its focus is on living the good life. "We want our readers to be surprised, but also entertained and amused‹to have fun."

The magazine still devotes many of its pages to fashion photos, news and advice, even though Cooper insists that "what matters the most to me is the quality of the writing we publish."

"People want to have the best possible life they can have," he said. "GQ tries to show them that life, and to bond with them by telling them stories." Cooper's proud of GQ's track record in covering thorny international issues such as human rights. But he readily acknowledges that he's lagged in tending to subjects such as the environment. One difficulty in following current affairs, of course, is the magazine's relatively long lead time‹from receipt of an article to publication‹of some two months. That's why, Cooper says, GQ offers more by way of perspective than coverage of breaking news. What does he look for in a writer? "What I look for most," he said, "is a voice‹idiosyncratic voices, passion, curiosity‹a writer with something to say."

"It's really a distinctive style of writing that I'm looking for," Cooper said. "What's important for voice is a point of view. I'm really not interested in objective journalism. I'm not interested in publishing articles that reflect the kind of institutional tone that, say, the newsweeklies possess. I want writers who have a point of view and who have the courage to express that point of view."

And so Cooper encourages the narrative technique of the novelist, wants his writers to come up with telling detail, to really be stylists. "All of our writers are very, very good reporters, too," Cooper said. So what makes a good editor? Or, to be specific, what's made Arthur Cooper the editor that he is?

"I think it's partly the ability to spot trends," he said. "You sense things. It may even be luck. Luck, they say, is residue of design. It's knowing how to ask the right questions. I have a voracious appetite to know. I'm sometimes called an educator‹but I'm really a student. I always learn from everybody, including the writers who work with me. I suppose part of being a good editor is also having the ability to pick the right people and then giving them the resources and editorial support."

And what's his own editorial voice like? Cooper's physical voice is one of his own most noticeable assets. A deep, warm baritone growl, it is at once authoritative and reassuring. One of his stars, Allison Glock, has described it as "thick with history and jazz‹a voice that has been earned. A voice from another time. A voice that will not be ignored."

"Which is why," she added, "it's an immeasurable blessing that Art Cooper is a man with so much to say."

He says it by not shouting. When he's angry, his voice becomes even lower than usual. And when he chats informally with his colleagues, what does he dwell on?

"Sinatra, jazz, I talk about Watergate, about my days at Time and Newsweek," Cooper said. "I've also got to keep in mind that for most of these young writers, 1985 is history. My obsession with Watergate? That period is not even in their consciousness."

But never mind. Cooper knows he's from another era. What's on his mind, though, is enormous satisfaction over what GQ has become under his stewardship. He will readily say that GQ's edge in the field of men's magazines comes from the fact that it has a stable of hugely talented writers and editors‹a staff that Cooper's willing to match person for person with any magazine in the world (including, he adds, the 11 other international editions of GQ, which are run independently of his US edition). "I work for the best company in the world," Cooper says, especially citing Newhouse, James Truman (the editorial director of Condé Nast), and Steven Florio, the company president. Cooper notes that in a year when many magazines have shuttered because of declining ad revenues, Newhouse has made huge investments in GQ by getting on board Fred Woodward‹the distinguished designer who was wooed away from Rolling Stone‹Mark Seliger, the photographer, and Ron Galotti, who's returned for his second stint at Condé Nast.

"This is a brutal business," Cooper said. "But I've been lucky. I suppose that I must have some talent and instinct that works."

So then, does he think about his editorial legacy?

"In this business, legacy is established in two ways," Cooper said. "One is in the kind of publication that you edit. You hope that will achieve historical relevance‹a great magazine that people will remember, such as Harold Hayes' Esquire, or Harold Ross's new Yorker, or Willie Morris's Harper's. Obviously, your magazine will evolve and change after you're gone. But you always hope that you will have accomplished something that people will remember and respect long after you're no longer on the scene."

And the second aspect of a legacy? "That lies in the people who work with you, those whom you bring along, those who will go on to edit their own magazines," Cooper said. "Some part of you will hopefully always be with them." It seemed appropriate to ask him this question: What was the single most powerful thing about his job that he loved?

Arthur Cooper said: "I once said to a person I was trying to recruit, 'What do you do when you wake up in the morning? Do you roll over and try and grab a bit more sleep? Or do you hop out of bed, raring to go to work? I promise you that if you come to GQ, you will not be able to wait to start work every morning."

He continued: "And you know what? That's exactly how I feel every morning. I just cannot wait to get to work. I don't want to miss a single minute of work.