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| The Interaction Between Playboy and Literature in the Formation of Mid-20th Century Middle-class Masculinity | ||||||||||||
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This writing copyright Matt Eyer, May
2004. All references to this text must be properly cited.
Table of Contents The
brows
The mag The scene The authors Highbrow Middlebrow Lowbrow/other The Icon Bibliography “What is a playboy?” “He can be a sharp-minded young business executive, a worker in the arts, a university professor, an architect or engineer. He can be many things, provided he possesses a certain point of view. He must see life not as a vale of tears, but as a happy time…” This definition is an excerpt from Hugh Hefner’s the Playboy Philosophy, a seven-part editorial series he wrote for Playboy in response to criticism from a variety of places, such as Harvey Cox’s essay “Playboy’s Doctrine of Male.” There was a need to define what the magazine’s reader was all about, who the magazine was targeting. It was bold; it was risqué; it was downright controversial, especially in its early years, the late 1950s and early 1960s. Defining this reader, as well as a reason for the magazine to exist, only goes so far, however. There was more to it. The targeted middle-class male audience was something still in development at the time. It had roots in the 19th century and changes were constantly occurring, especially around landmark events such as World War II. As this transformation occurred, and this new type of masculinity developed toward a certain cultural status, Hefner jumped on it. That’s not to say he was studying sociology closely and knew exactly what was going on—he saw it from more of a business standpoint, as he worked for Esquire before publishing his own magazine. But somehow he had an idea for a different type of men’s magazine, and somehow he knew it would catch on; that it would become what men wanted to read. At the same time, this middle-class of men, mostly the white-collar, at least somewhat college-educated, were still “finding themselves.” Playboy often worked to help them do just that, especially in regard to one of its forms of cultural dissemination: literature. Yes, Playboy magazine was as a major purveyor of new literature at the time, in terms of literature that fit the magazine’s philosophy, and fit the development of the middle-class readers. There were reviews, short stories and serialized novels. Ian Fleming’s James Bond was a typical and key figure. Some authors were new, or just obscure, or had long been established as “great.” All in all, the literary element was mostly middlebrow, and for good reason. The image of a man being questioned about reading Playboy and saying he likes the articles is something of a joke in contemporary culture. But this image can be traced back to the beginnings of the magazine. It was something Hefner had in mind when he launched. Though the sexual content was the dominant aspect of the magazine, Hefner felt it important to have quality writing. This didn’t necessarily mean “highbrow” writing, however. Though examples from all “brows” were published in the magazine, the primary literary culture found is “middlebrow.” This middlebrow culture fits the instructional aspect of the magazine; it works to groom the tastes of the targeted middle-class male that Hefner had in mind. The instructional role of Playboy’s literature is key, and examined in an essay by professors Walter M. Gerson and Sander H. Lund, “Playboy Magazine: Sophisticated Smut or Social Revolution?” Gerson and Lund point out how the Playboy reviews of books, records, movies, plays, nightclubs and other entertainments “demonstrate to the reader how a “Playboy” should behave” (Gerson 222). They look at two different types of instruction found within Playboy: formal and informal. The fictional stories, they say, falls under the informal category, which teaches readers actions, attitudes, beliefs, and a certain style of living. The theme of “cool but active sophistication”, (more on this notion and the literary figure James Bond later) fill out the personality and intellectuality of the playboy, as Gerson and Lund put it. The stereotypical playboy becomes “multidimensional” (223). What Gerson and Lund are getting at is that a major educative element of the fiction is to help create these playboys that can go to parties and quote from novels, fit in with intellectuals, and impress women with their knowledge. This, along with actions themselves found in many of the works in Playboy, is the major purpose and function of the literature in the magazine. This will be seen throughout the examples of authors, in one way or both, as a way of using the middlebrow to appeal to and sculpting the male middle-class reader of Playboy. The
brows
First, to better understand what is meant by a “brow” literary culture, it is important to reveal what the terms highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow mean, specifically in the mid-1900s. Insight can be found in Joan Shelley Rubin’s The Making of Middlebrow Culture. The term highbrow could be defined as “refined” as early as the 1880s, and lowbrow could be defined as a “lack of cultivation” by the turn of the century (Rubin xii). The use of the height of the brow itself originated from phrenology, or the practice of studying character by looking at the skull, and has overtones of racial differentiation. In the 19th century, employers would often use local phrenologists to check the character of perspective employees. The facial features of Caucasians were considered of a higher level than those of other races, and the larger skulls of males were equated with the supposed greater intelligence when compared to women. Such a history is fairly general and doesn’t necessarily relate to literature, though literary critics developed their own, seemingly detached use of the terms. Margaret Widdemer’s 1933 essay “Message and Middlebrow,” published in the Saturday Review, used the term middlebrow to show a middle ground between the high and low, which had already been transformed to describe intellectual competence. Widdemer called middlebrow “fairly civilized” and “fairly literate,” and said it encompassed the majority of people (Rubin xii-xiii). Though many critics and scholars have differing opinions of what middlebrow literature is, Rubin defines it in terms of cultural education. She strays from equating the term with mediocrity, and is attracted to the idea of bringing culture to the masses — something that Playboy also did for this emerging class of males. Also, Rubin believes the middlebrow critical culture often fails to maintain aesthetic standards, citing consumer priorities as the reason. A clearer understanding of the brows in regards to literature specifically can be found from Ruth Pirsig Wood, in her 1995 book Lolita in Peyton Place: Highbrow, Middlebrow, and Lowbrow Novels of the 1950s. She defines each literary culture, giving characteristics that would place a book in one of the three. Lowbrow books, or formula fiction, “are as easy to recognize as they are to criticize” (Wood 43). The characters in this literature are flat, there’s plain language, and the plots are predictable. Narrative techniques are clear-cut to steer clear of any possible multiple viewpoints. Wood says much of these techniques are employed to avoid any possible dissonance with the reader, and to keep the protagonist specifically at a similar level as the reader. Foreign locales must be “de-othered” so that readers can somewhat understand and associate with them. The language in lowbrow books is very static and uniform, attempting to get the same response from all readers. Simple sentence structure and vocabulary combine with either no figurative language or clichéd figurative language, adding to the need to give the lowbrow reader something easy with which to identify. For Wood, middlebrow novels are then a step above the lowbrow, with less predictable plots and characters that are functional and a bit more developed and veiled. Mimetic detail and lengthy description become prevalent in middlebrow literature, and language is more clever and figurative than that of lowbrow. There are also more varied plot structures and perhaps multiple stories unfolding at once. Another important aspect is its use of everyday life situations and the presentation of various means to cope with them. Some novels will even give, not straight out but within the protagonist’s struggle, warnings of the consequences of each possible action. “To convince readers that they are getting a dependable instance of life—to allow them to use their novel-reading as survival training, mimetic naturalism is a stock feature of middlebrow novels” (52). This sense of the middlebrow novel as being an instructional tool has also been discussed in essays by John Aldridge, a member of the critical literature debates in the 1960s, and will be discussed later on as it relates to the literature found in Playboy. Whereas this middlebrow literature would instruct one on the right course of action, highbrow novels reject that a correct choice can even be known; it undermines mimetic naturalism. Language, plot, and characterization function to make the highbrow world unclear as opposed to the lowbrow attempt to make everything seem familiar. For Wood: Linguistic play is in some sense its very essence, for by using language that demands attention to the process of decoding, highbrow writers signal that whatever appears on the page is a mere construct of language, not a means to an end but an end in itself (52). Highbrow novels, unlike low and middlebrow, have characters that aren’t to be taken as real people. There can be two broad strains of highbrow novels seen in America at that time: those that search for the true nature of the human being and those that search for the true nature of our social selves. Nothing is what it seems to be in these highbrow works. Perception is everything. They asked epistemological questions (how do we know) and showed how to look at the world, rather than asking the empirical questions of what there is to see. It’s clear that all three types of literature had quite distinctive features, at least in the 1950s. As with anything, there are differing viewpoints on how to define the brows. Other ways of seeing it are presented by Janice Radway and Dwight MacDonald. Radway uses a study of the methods of the editors of the Book-of-the-Month Club as well as principle’s from Pierre Bourdieu’s theories in Distinction to define middlebrow literature. She sees middlebrow as something that gets “damned” with “faint praise”, literature that maintains the authority of the intellectual to make certain distinctions, and a way for the gate-controlling editors to act as cultural workers in creating cultural capital (Radway 517-521). Radway doesn’t neglect the point of what is to be found within middlebrow literature; she says the BOTM editors always go back to language, and the idea that “trash” is “sloppily-written” (Radway 528). Radway says middlebrow literature can still be experimental, but cannot distance itself too much from the world of the readers. Also, it can have functionality, and be used almost as a tool or technology for the readers, a concept that fits well within the literary culture of Playboy. MacDonald, instead of putting things in terms of “brows,” uses the distinctions of High Culture, Midcult and Masscult. For MacDonald, High Culture is the only one that actually knows its place and is completely intelligible, and he says it basically starts the process of dividing different forms of culture. Masscult, then, is purely the opposite of the High Culture, and MacDonald frankly asserts that Masscult literature has no chance of being good. For the cultural elite, MacDonald, says, these two distinctions are preferable. It separates the high and the mass in black and white, with no overlap. However, Midcult then comes about when parts of both Masscult and High Culture “ooze” together, forming a gray area. This is where MacDonald would place works by authors such as Ernest Hemingway or James Joyce; it’s a combination of writing that could be considered “good” by the cultural bourgeoisie but still be accessible to those of the Masscult. Therefore, instead of being a culture of its own, the middle for MacDonald is something that merely occurs, in what he calls a natural cycle in American culture. Besides these arguments of “brow” culture on their own, there is important study of culture by classes to keep in mind – those found in Distinctions, Pierre Bourdieu’s most important work that culminates his studies of cultural capital. For Bourdieu, culture and economics are tied together, and preferences due to economic constraints become aesthetic preferences. For example, the working class would be mostly inclined to things of necessity and practicality, since that’s what their economic restraints would allow. But for Bourdieu it goes beyond simple economics—the choice of the necessary and practical actually become a taste, or preference, of that economic class. Therefore, higher classes such as Bourdieu’s bourgeoisie who possess plenty of capital can distance themselves from the necessities and have a “taste for freedom.” It is also a matter of aesthetics, as this higher class could stylize or formalize cultural elements, separating themselves from the simple, mundane realm of necessity. Finally, along the lines of the economics, culture itself is used as a tool to maintain the economic distinctions, such as equating low cultural forms with the working class and the high culture with the bourgeoisie and through socializing mechanisms that use cultural knowledge as an economic gatekeeper to middle class jobs. Even with so many differing views of middlebrow, a distinction for it can still be made and a general category used to do a study. By using the different features of the middle as a guide, and by looking at the state of literature at the time, it will be possible to situate Playboy’s literature firmly in a middlebrow category, and understand the relationship between the literature and the cultural construct of the “playboy.” Stuck
in
the middle
Before proceeding with the analysis of Playboy’s middle-class, we must acknowledge and keep in mind the fact that “the playboy” is a cultural construct. Clearly there was a culture in America around the conception of the magazine that it spoke to. But that’s not to say that Playboy didn’t do its part. Hefner did have a vision, a vision that he seemed to fulfill quite well, and essentially created the cultural phenomenon around what was there. Playboy’s literature acts as a means for Hefner to legitimize his product as culture, or even as intellectual, without alienating the audience that is so important to the magazine’s success. The literary analysis will not only look at the published literature and critical reviews, but also how that fits in the larger picture of the middlebrow/middle-class distinctions and the idea of the “playboy.” The middlebrow category parallels the development of Playboy’s middle class of men. In the 1950s and 1960s, the “footloose bachelor” and the “vibrant youth” emerged as relatively new social constructs. In Playboys in Paradise, Bill Osgerby points out that these two constructs have their own cultural background and development, but often complimented and informed one another (Osgerby 3). Both youth and hedonistic masculinity intertwined during the time period, driven by the ideas of consumption and leisure: “Prosperous and independent, virile and irrepressible, the suave and smooth-talking playboy arose during the 1950s and early 1960s as one of the defining icons of American vitality and modernity…it was in the field of magazine publishing that he became most strikingly visible—marked, above all, by the rise of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine as a national institution. (4) Osgerby goes on to describe Playboy as an embodiment of a new middle class that valued consumption, individuality and stylistic self-expression (4). The middle-class itself originally saw beginnings after the Civil War, as a gap between manual and non-manual work formed. The image of the “self-made man” or “rugged individualist” became prominent at this time. But in the early 20th century, tensions arose for men as there were less farmers and businessmen and more clerical or retail workers, as well as a rise in divorce rates, and the middle-class males began looking to reassert their “manly” qualities (18-21). Scholar Kevin White pointed out that many of these men followed a trend toward “underworld primitivism,” where toughness and sexual aggression become visible (Osgerby 22). Places such as the saloon or pool hall, once antithetical to middle class values, were now becoming popular. The older image of “masculine domesticity” and the newer “robust manhood,” by the 1920s and 1930s, gained a third-party within middle-class cultures: the new bachelor. The new bachelor developed around stylish consumption and leisure, with an emphasis on heterosexual interaction, nightclubs (like the jazz scene) and “smart but casual” dress (Osgerby 32-33). Scholars debate whether these earlier types of masculinity directly helped form the “playboy ethic,” or the middle-class male consumer/leisure culture of the 1950s and 1960s. However, according to Osgerby, it is clear they at least parallel one another (40). The magazine business began targeting this audience a bit earlier, mostly just after World War II, as Esquire became very popular. The magazine had been around since 1933, and it became an important force in creating the style-conscious male consumer (41, 58). Esquire had somewhat risqué pictures of women, but stayed away from full nudity, and placed a higher emphasis on male-oriented writing than just pictures. It embodied a masculinity that the middle class was looking for. The youth market began to soar, with delinquency rising, and icons such as former President John F. Kennedy and Elvis Presley took center stage. Television and Rock ‘n roll were huge. There was a “Joe College” image, a middle-class youth car culture and surfing culture, and soon the bikini was developed. With all the forces in play, the American leisure style took a recognizable form in the 1950s and 1960s (116-117). From there came Hefner, and his new competition for Esquire. Hefner called his magazine the son of Esquire, except that it was a new and different product. It seems with the American “playboy” emerging around the same time Hefner launched, and the name Playboy matching the scene perfectly, there was no way it could fail. The middle-class male wanted both the sexual element and an element of class and leisure, which is exactly what Hefner had to offer. “…the secret of Playboy’s success lay in the way it combined sex and status—winning a mainstream distribution and readership through its adept integration of pornography within the context of an upmarket lifestyle magazine” (122). To do this effectively, Playboy had to get credible (not necessarily highbrow) literature. In Thomas Wyer’s Reaching for Paradise: the Playboy vision of America, it is said that the beginning didn’t bring the biggest names quite yet, as the magazine had only $2,000 to spend on literature (Wyer 10). By the end of the first year, writers began seeing the market Playboy offered, and the magazine was established with the local talent, though the larger publishers still wouldn’t budge on Playboy’s low pay rates. Two turning points followed; in 1957 Hefner hired Auguste Spectorsky (who worked for the New Yorker and edited Living for Young Homemakers magazine) to manage the literary aspect of the magazine, and in 1960 Playboy’s pay rates became high enough to get bigger talent. Spectorsky and Hefner clashed, as the former wanted more of a literature emphasis and the latter wanted the emphasis to be on sex. Spectorsky still helped get better fiction, however, getting rising names like Ray Bradbury and establishing a $1,000 fiction award—the first of which went to Herbert Gold, a middlebrow writer that contributed often (37-45). Playboy also published a short story by beatnik Jack Kerouac around the time he published his most renowned work, On the Road. It was a crusade for Spectorsky, who soon was able to obtain work from the likes of John Steinbeck, clearly a literary name that would give the magazine more literary credibility. Spectorsky obviously played a key role in the realization of Hefner’s vision, which is exactly the point of hiring him. Now Playboy could be more of an actor in the world of literature at the time. The
scene
The state of literature during the 1950s and 1960s seemed to be quite troubling to critics. Literary scholars such as Aldridge saw a sort of vanishing of an active middlebrow literary culture. The classics of previous decades and the previous century, such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald or Emerson, served as the vast majority of middlebrow literature. But as the 1960s approached, these classics remained as the middlebrow culture. “High quality” new authors weren’t finding their way into the middlebrow world. As Aldridge put it: “in sharp contrast to their predecessors and in a manner seemingly unique in literature, these (new) writers have been absorbed directly into the highbrow critical canon without ever having had to fight the battle for general readership and acceptance in the middlebrow world” (Aldridge April 1964 166). His reasons for this change are a highbrow interest in the work of new writers, and that there’s “no longer a ground on which the battle for middlebrow acceptance can be fought” (166). Aldridge also described what the middlebrow reader wants. The middlebrow is mostly made up of middle-class people. According to him, they wanted escape from life and from literature. They wanted to read books that would give them some of the fantasy and pornographic elements of the lowbrow, but in a literary and digestible way according to middle-class moral standards. It’s kind of a delusion, where they can feel cultured and feel like they’re reading literature. Aldridge also specifically mentions Playboy alongside Esquire as publications where there was more and more of a literary emphasis. This doesn’t necessarily come from just the standpoint of highbrows but also non-highbrows who look up to the higher form of literature. In a separate piece written for the New York Times Book Review, it’s worth noting that Aldridge basically decried the majority of the newer novelists of that time, saying they don’t provide what intellectuals want. He [the literary intellectual] expects them to free his imagination from its bondage to the past, by giving him a comparable intensity and excitement. He does not, to be sure, want reincarnation of the writers he admired in his youth, people who write like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the others. (Aldridge March 1964 59) Aldridge said the novelist himself would need to take off the “blinders” of established literary ways in order to be “any good at all” (59). The direction Aldridge is heading with this would logically make way for the highbrow writers of that time, who created new styles of their own, different from the literary norms. Writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs would gladly trade norms such as plot for a more surreal, experimental s style. Highbrow critics raved about writers like this, while the middlebrows were reading the classics and works by the new authors who wrote in the established format of the classics. This feeling that literature was falling rapidly was shared by some other than Aldridge. Burgess, also in an article for New York Times Book Review, spoke of “the good read.” He pointed out early on that Playboy itself was not in that category, nor was Fleming’s Goldfinger. The fact that he drew upon the magazine and a book it serialized as two out of three quick examples of reads that aren’t “good” shows how the critics and highbrows wouldn’t be the ones interested in Playboy’s middlebrow-focused literature. Burgess ultimately says he doesn’t care that “good literature” will soon give way to more advanced audio/visual technology (Burgess 2). He’d much rather see the “good read” survive. This good read was a critical work, which Burgess says often gave better and more invigorating insight into a novel than the novel itself (2). He, like Aldridge, lost much faith in the novel on its known. Burgess would rather give way to highbrow criticisms than be continually bombarded with the same, washed-up style of literature that had been around. This era in literature was also a major point for bringing literary culture to the masses. In her book, Rubin discusses John Erskine’s attempt to create a “great books” college course and bring to the public’s eyes what should be read as “great books.” Rubin shows how the list Erskine created can serve as a good example of how canon formation writers who weren’t traditional Western white male authors. Erskine wanted the works that were “best” with concern to dealing with dilemmas (Rubin 165). Such “normal” canonical names such as Shakespeare, Voltaire, Milton, William James and Henry George were on the list. In bringing these works into the college classroom, Erskine wanted to give the students what he felt they wanted—a chance to read the literature and relate it directly to their lives, in order to finish college with a certain gentlemanly knowledge of recognized “masterpieces” (165). This sounds awfully like the point Aldridge made about middlebrow literature, which includes many of these canonical texts, functioning as an educative tool. College students could be from any class, but the majority would likely be from the middle class. And having a “gentleman’s” knowledge of the texts and thus the world, as in Gerson and Lund’s argument about the educative element, sounds much like a function of Playboy in shaping its readers around the Playboy philosophy. Also, with this cultural capital gained by the reader, he could use it as sexual capital, impressing women. Another point Rubin brought out in his book was the difference in types of book reviewing. He described two types: news and critical. The news approach to book reviewing would involve anonymous writers, often in the newspapers, that more or less announce the release of a new book and perhaps give a slight recommendation. They would be short and usually do more to give a synopsis than actually review the book. Critical reviews were what would have been found in places such as the New York Times Book Review or the London Times Literary Supplement. These reviews were often written by established literary critics, scholars or writers and looked more toward conveying the aesthetic and moral principles of the book to the audience. Reviews found in Playboy seemed to be in between these two types of reviews outlined by Rubin. The reviews would be found within a general night life section, where films, theatre, and other forms of entertainment also had mentions. The reviews were short and anonymous, like the news-oriented reviews. But instead of just announcing the books, Playboy also made an attempt to tell the reader which books were worth his while. In some cases, the reviews actually used the language of the distinguished critic. At any rate, the important thing is that the reviews would serve as a guide for the Playboy reader, who would know what books to read on his journey to live out the Playboy lifestyle. In these reviews, Playboy tended to reject the new highbrow novels and played-up more of the middlebrow ones. An example is the review of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Playboy speaks quite highly of this piece, which was written in a very straightforward, yet experimental form, the non-fiction novel, combining elements of high and low. Capote’s developed characters and intricate detail were major elements that would put this in the middlebrow category. It goes beyond the simplicity of the lowbrow novel but avoids the coded language of highbrow. The Playboy review took a less-than-critical tone, calling the book “a chillingly minute account of the slaughter, its prolog, and its aftermath that reads like exciting fiction” (Rev. Feb. 1966 30). The review also called Capote’s novel a “memorable achievement—almost too memorable in the horror it evokes” (30). The highbrow would be much less concerned with evoked horror, and more concerned with meaning and aesthetics. Some reviews of highbrow novels in Playboy include Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Both of these up-and-coming authors brought unique styles, and very much fit highbrow standards. Realism was out the window in both cases, and Pynchon and Burroughs both employ the linguistic play that Wood would look for in a highbrow novel. Also, perception is key, as there’s not necessarily a plot—especially in the case of Pynchon—but more or less a mixture of events that could be understood in different ways. Playboy’s distaste for this highbrow style is quite evident in its reviews. In questioning certain aspects of the novel, the review says “it is a matter of some effort to care,” this is itself telling as it is the caring, hence empathy with the characters, which is seen as mattering as opposed to the ideas presented (Rev. April 1966 26). It also describes some of the character names as a dip to the “level of the college humor magazine” (26). In all reality, Pynchon’s character names are a part of the unending satire found throughout the novel. Playboy would rather something more straightforward, and perhaps something more real-life oriented—something that will help instruct its readers, not confuse them. The review of Burroughs is similar as Playboy describes reading the book as “lunching on the day’s leftovers” (Rev. Jan. 1963 34). Burroughs’ style is seen as much too chaotic for the Playboy reader. Most importantly, the review mentions Burroughs’ incessant sexual references, but says they “never touch ground” (34). It’s compared to the risqué work of Henry Miller (an author that published works in Playboy), which is described as “amusing, lusty, or absurd” (34). The fact of the matter here is that Burroughs uses coded language and avoids realism in his highbrow writing style, and Playboy doesn’t like that. The Playboy audience is assumed to need something more middlebrow and in the realist style like Miller, which will amuse them and not be too complicated. All three of these works were also reviewed by New York Times Book Review. In regards to Capote’s work, Conrad Knickerbocker praises him for his ability to mock anti-realism by using real events. Anti-realism is a very highbrow concept, so it shows how Knickerbocker, like other reviewers for the New York Times, were well aware of the literary styles and could call upon them when writing critically. The reviews of Pynchon and Burroughs were also basically positive, as the critical reviewers tended to look at how each other was able to write novels that didn’t follow a standard format like lowbrow or even middlebrow, and instead were more complicated and demanded a perception that goes beyond just basic plot and characters. Whereas Playboy preferred the easier-to-read, realistic works, the New York Times Book Review was able to look critically and see different high and low points about different novels, and ultimately give a good review for both novels that Playboy liked and disliked. The
authors
Reviews weren’t the only direct way Playboy acknowledged literature. The magazine also published serialized novels, short stories, novelettes, and essays by various authors of the time. A good overview of these works can be found in the Twelfth Anniversary Playboy Reader, published in 1965. Hugh Hefner picked the selections to include, and wrote the preface and intros for each piece. In his preface, Hefner said Playboy aims to “entertain in its broadest sense”—not “merely to lull or amuse” (Hefner ix). This claim alone would shut the door on the possibility of lowbrow literature, since that would likely be the type to amuse. Lull is kind of a difficult term to examine, but in taking it in its definition of being within a silent, relaxed state, one could think of it as relating to a state of meditation or deep thought, perhaps tying it to the intellectuality of the highbrow. Middlebrow, however, is more of an entertainment, a bit above lowbrow, but not on the intellectual level of highbrow. Hefner also said “the most talented of contemporary writers are attracted to our pages because we offer them an unmatched opportunity to say their say” (Hefner viii). He mentioned a plan, whereas Playboy would seek and develop new writers, in addition to the use of “big names.” Deciding on what authors to use can also deal with the subject of censorship, as Hefner implicitly stated in the preface that Playboy was a place to publish the controversial and the risqué. He even made reference to a work that can be found by Henry Miller, which Hefner describes as a “clarion blast against censorship” (ix). Miller’s writing revolves around sex, and he appears in the reader along with Vladimir Nabokov, whose writing often also explored sexual relations, such as in Lolita. Playboy clearly wants its readers to read about and be aware of sexuality. Perhaps this is an aspect of the education of the playboy: to reject some of the moral objections of society in terms of the risqué content of the magazine, and to open to new ideas and writings. For a closer look at what was published, the authors and works themselves must be examined in more detail. The most efficient way of doing this seems to be taking a reasonable sampling, which will be varying selections from the Playboy Reader, and looking at them within their broader categories of types of literature. To stick with the familiar terminology, the authors will be grouped generally as highbrow, middlebrow or lowbrow/special interest. It seems quite natural that it works out that the middlebrow category has more examples than the other two. However, the highbrow and lowbrow works still serve their functions as a part of Playboy. In the realm of highbrow, there are both well-known and lesser-known authors; the examples studied here will be Henry Miller, Bernard Malamud and Jack Kerouac. It is a motley list itself, from the censored to obscure, to highly-renowned, to beatnik. In any case, Miller and Malamud were included for their legitimization of the erotic as art and Kerouac because of Playboy’s presentation of an intellectual debate about the Beat writers, despite its questionable stance on the Beats. Henry Miller, of course, is the author that has much ado about censorship. His work was widely-reviewed, and thought of highly in the critical world. Despite this, his important novel Tropic of Cancer was banned for 27 years in the United States after it was published in 1934 in France. In January of 1962, the year after the book began distribution in the United States, Miller published an anti-censorship piece in Playboy called “I Defy You,” which Hefner prefaced with an editor’s note describing the situation involving Tropic of Cancer and why Miller’s voice on the subject was important. The very end of the piece sums it up well: What we are dealing with, in my opinion, are archaic laws. Stone Age mentalities, sadists disguised as benefactors, impotents invested with authority, kill-joys, hypocrites, perverts. I am not defending myself—I accuse. Prove to me that you are worthy of judging this book and I may turn a respectful ear. Show me your clean hands, your clean heart, your clean conscience. I defy you. (Miller ) Miller wrote an outright accusation of the censorship community. And his argument smartly backed up his point. He discussed the European “critical favor” the book had already received, the basic freedom of people to read what they want to read, the idea that publicly criticizing and banning books will only interest people more in the books, and the fact that the courts had not yet (to that point in time) defined “obscenity.” Miller’s literature and argument are highbrow, but it still applies greatly to Hefner’s middlebrow audience because it argues against censorship—one of the things the Playboy Philosophy does not look highly upon. In an article for the New York Times, Harry T. Moore refers to a book by Eberhard and Phyllis Kraunhausen called Pornography and the Law. The book puts Miller’s work in the erotic-realism category of “basically healthy and therapeutic” as opposed to “hardcore pornography.” The way in which Miller turned the erotic into a highbrow art form is without a doubt critical to Hefner’s praise of him as an important author, and lends validity and credibility to Hefner’s fight against censorship and use of eroticism in Playboy. Moore also says the Beat Generation gives Miller ancestor worship, and the “older literary cliques” call his work passé. This idea of the formerly-highbrow-and-now-accessible, as well as the renown from the Hefner-loved Beats, places Miller squarely in not only Hefner’s cry against censorship but also his overall literary scheme. Another important piece is Bernard Malamud, who could be seen widely in literary criticism. The New York Times published numerous reviews of Malamud, most of which were almost systematically positive and placed him in his high-art category. The negative reviews, such as one by William DuBois for The Natural, still praised Malamud’s ability as an author. DuBois called The Natural a failure because it was difficult to follow—quite a lowbrow criticism—and that only a psychiatrist could unscramble it. Highbrow authors of the time—especially of the post-modern variety, used such difficulty as a device. The highbrow literature in genera did not see an easy-to-follow plot as a key to literary success; the more important aspects of the literature were the exploration of the characters’ psyches and the ability to play with cultural references and use hidden meanings. This is essentially what Malamud did in the Natural; it used the cultural staple of baseball as a backdrop to a much deeper psychological storyline. Harry Sylvester, for example, calls the novel a “sustained and elaborate allegory” and “a brilliant and unusual book.” It seems Sylvester had no problem understanding Malamud’s purpose, unlike DuBois. Such critical difference can say a lot about a writer’s work—it’s not simply loved or hated, it’s disputed. A William Goyen review of The Assistant first praises The Natural and then says Malamud will bring more pleasure to his readers and reaffirm his talent with The Assistant. The reviews of both the novels point out how the stories work on two levels—one, the basic plot, and two, a deeper meaning that gets stringed throughout. This is also true in Naked Nude, published in Playboy in August 1963, in which a painter is forced by a whorehouse major-domo (Scarpio) into reproducing a famous nude painting in a nearby museum in Italy, so that Scarpio and his partner could steal the painting using deceit and get ransom money for the original. The painter, Fidelman, sees his only option is to comply, and begins attempting to make an exact copy. He constantly fails, despite trying numerous things to inspire him, and finally makes a realization that he should steal the original himself. Now that he was working for his own purposes, Fidelman was able to make the reproduction, and manages to swap the paintings and kill Scarpio. Besides the plot line itself, the story has a subplot in which Malamud thinks back to and dreams about experiences with the naked female form, culminating in his realization that everybody steals and he could steal the painting himself. It not only appeals to Playboy’s interest in the female form, but also manages to bring a piece of highbrow literature to middle-class and middlebrow taste. The use of nude art in the story makes Malamud similar to Miller by way of Hefner legitimizing the erotic as artistic. Finally, a much different highbrow writer found in Playboy is Jack Kerouac, arguably the most famous of the beatniks. Playboy’s editors were ambiguous of whether or not they actually liked the beat writers, especially after running three articles, by Herbert Gold, Sam Boal and Noel Clad, which were all basically anti-beatnik. And yet the magazine published three Kerouac stories and his obituary. For one, Wyer pointed it that by doing this Playboy had at least confronted the movement—opened a dialogue, so-to-speak, and more so than Time or Newsweek had. It was another thing readers could discourse about at parties, a piece of the educative and intellectual element. It seems that alone was enough for the magazine’s editors, as they each had similar ambiguity in whether they liked the genre. The general sense from Hefner and other editors was that they supported such a social movement, especially when it involves some kind of sexual revolution (as long as its heterosexual) as the beat movement did. However, the specific principles of the beat movement clashed with the Playboy philosophy, as Playboy editor Ray Russell put it: “The sandaled, dirty feet, unwashed aspects of the beats ran against the grain of the well-groomed, button-down, Aqua Velva look our reader wanted. The antiestablishment attitude, lack of material ambition, or desire to get ahead, which typified the beats, was not what Playboy was all about. (Wyer 49) In any event, it may have been better for Playboy to not take a definite editorial stance; it not only allowed both sides to be published, but it gave the magazine a different type of intellectual credibility, as a participant in cultural debates—thus adding to the role of the educating the middle-class, middlebrow reader. In the move to the middlebrow category itself, we can find authors such as Ernest Hemingway, James Jones, John Steinbeck, Herbert Gold and Steve Allen, all very different. Hemingway is the lead-off example because of his long-marked status of a great writer, and for how he fits within Playboy itself. Hemingway could be one of those writers mentioned earlier that at a time may have been considered kind of highbrow but became more middlebrow with the advent of post-modernism, being pushed into the vague category of “classic literature” with many of the other great writers prior to the mid-1900s. Hemingway’s writing specifically, however, would have always been attractive to a by-definition middlebrow audience, as his minimalist approach is often quite easy to read—though deeper meanings can be found within. That being noted, the more important aspect of Hemingway in terms of his function in Playboy is his role as a “man’s man.” He appeals to those who would strive to be the “rugged individual” that came about within the middleclass at this time, which Hefner would have targeted. Hemingway was much about growing up and growing old, as seen in his extensive collection of Nick Adams stories, a character followed in short stories from his childhood to his death. Hemingway drew vastly upon his own experiences to write stories and novels that were meant to be read separate from his own biography. Topics often included hunting, fishing, war and general survival. This goes back to Playboy’s instructional role, specifically in telling its readers how to be men and what kind of men to be. There was a lot of Hemingway published in the magazine, from stories he wrote to articles and articles by his son. There was a definite focus during the time period on keeping plenty of Hemingway in the pages of the magazine. The middlebrow author that could be somewhat similar to Hemingway is James Jones, who is most noted for From Here to Eternity and the Thin Red Line. Both of these gained much popularity when adapted to film; the former being in 1953 and the latter in 1964 (with a contemporary remake in 1999). This translates into bringing culture to the masses, one part of the middlebrow phenomenon. The high romance level of From Here to Eternity, which included Frank Sinatra in the cast, was extremely risqué in the 1950s, and some considered the film one of the boldest of its time. That would surely catch the attention of Hefner, because it challenged issues of censorship and sexuality. The two novels have four recurring characters that also appear in Jones’ Whistle, which was announced to be in production for next year to complete the loosely-tied trilogy. The Thin Red Line was actually first published as a serial in Playboy in 1962, and adapted to film just two years later. Like Hemingway, Jones was a war veteran and American expatriate writer, and wrote about war as well as other subjects. In this way, Jones works with the Playboy Philosophy in a pretty similar way as Hemingway, both in writing “manly” experiences; Jones, however, has the added challenge to censorship in his court as well. Moving back to another “classic literature” type of author, John Steinbeck is a high-middlebrow example who has had very good critical review over the years, and is a household name like Hemingway. Clearly, there is the fact that Hefner would welcome any such reputable male writer into his pages; it can only add to Playboy’s credibility. In the Playboy Reader, Hefner welcomed Steinbeck’s “Short-short Story of Mankind” as “wild and pointed humor.” The story itself was published in April 1958. It is, indeed, very short—spanning less than two full pages with the accompanying art removed. The story itself is “an improbable allegory of human history compressed for a very small time capsule” (April 1958, 32). Steinbeck begins with primitive humans living in a cave, with typical American names, who struggle with a new group of people living nearby, who they refer to as “savages.” These new ones have some type of guns, and are quickly hunting all the food sources around. The story goes to follow a handful of cave people (“jokers”) that have new ideas that the “elders” quickly kill them for but then the cave people adopt their ways afterwards. The things these “jokers” did was eventually make the different groups of people need to cooperate and unite. Steinbeck fast-forwards time near the end, saying “it went on from state to league and from league to nation” (34). He said it would usually stop at mountains or water as natural boundaries, until some “jokers” invented long-range missiles and atomic bombs. Now, Steinbeck said, it was too dangerous to have separate nations, just as it used to be too dangerous to have separate families, or states, or leagues. Therefore, the United Nations was necessary to be formed, and the world would fight the possibility of extinction just as it always had, because: It’d be kind of silly if we killed ourselves off after all this time. If we do, we’re stupider than the cave people and I don’t’ think we are. I think we’re just exactly as stupid and that’s pretty bright in the long run. (34) The story is comedic in its satire, and makes Steinbeck’s point in a short form. The piece is just an example of the author’s great writing, but more importantly it seems that Hefner wants his readers to enjoy this sort of satirical humor, and be enlightened by it while being entertained. In his reader introduction, Hefner mentions Steinbeck by name as being included for “pointed” humor. The intellectual element brought forth by Gerson and Lund also is important to keep in mind with Steinbeck’s satire, as this is widely considered an intelligent type of humor, and its inclusion would certainly be supportive of the Playboy philosophy. Herbert Gold, though not on quite as high a scale, is a classic middlebrow example like Steinbeck, and another author that saw a lot of action in the pages of Playboy, both fiction and essays. Gold was very prominent at the time, both as a writer and as a critic. Much of his work involved Playboy-esque themes, talking mostly about the young American male, and the “Joe College” prototype. That not only attracts the younger and bachelor demographic, but Gold’s work could also attract Playboy’s married men, as Harry T. Moore put it in a review of Gold’s Love and Life for the New York Times: “Herbert Gold’s reputation as one of the best writers under 40 will be strengthened by this book…[These are] stories about a young man who in the accumulation of experience becomes almost mythically representative. He is the lower-bourgeois intellectual of the junior-executive, assistant professor generation” (Moore XX). Moore also went on to discuss how the book he was reviewing fit within Gold’s typical themes of how a man has troubles with his wife, travels to a place like France or Haiti, “tangles with his girl students,” and meets colorful characters. There is an element here of living vicariously through this literature, something that Aldridge said about middlebrow/middle-class male readers, and something that fits within the Playboy model of the young bachelor reading to learn how to live or the married man reading to get away from it all. An example of Gold’s work published in the magazine is “What’s Become of Your Creature?”, a story that uses Gold’s theme of romance with a student. Another element working in the story are various references to literature and culture. The narrator talks about what kind of music the girl listens to and when the two are out they sprinkle literature and culture in their conversations. As in the essay by Gerson in Lund, there is an element of sophistication and intellect within the realm of sex. Gold’s story is not just about going to bed with the girl, but doing it with a certain degree of cultural knowledge and general intellect. It is the same as the idea of the middle-class Playboy reader mingling at a party and being able to conjure up and understand references to literature and culture. It is such an important part of the philosophy—a man can dress well, look good and work hard to be successful, but all this will fail if he cannot bring it to the table around others. It has been shown already and will be seen again. There’s no wonder that Gold won Playboy’s first fiction award, and why his writings have been scrawled on the magazine’s pages innumerable times. These middlebrow examples have been mostly literary; however, the other example is Steve Allen, a man who spread himself throughout culture, both in written word and in music, as well as in popular culture on television. Allen was an established comedian in the 1950s. In that same decade, his career kind of took off when he was asked by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to host their new late-night talk show: The Tonight Show. Allen’s show format became a standard for late-night television. It was used by his successors—the likes of Johnny Carson, Jack Paar and Jay Leno—and is still used today by many others. In the musical world, Allen was a composer, lyricist, singer and pianist. Then there’s the literature. Allen wrote 54 novels, not too mention plenty of short stories, poems, plays and articles. Besides Playboy, his work has been published in periodicals such as the New York Times, the Saturday Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and Esquire. The short story Everybody Hates David Starbuck, published in Playboy in December 1958, draws upon Allen’s humor that, as U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman put it, “shows us why we should all cry for the degradation of our culture and our common values.” The story is about a dishonest film director named David Starbuck who is found dead, a suicide. However, it shows how a man named Walt Swanson claimed credit for killing him, as he had subliminally told Starbuck how horrible he was through splicing his films with degrading quotes. Allen’s middlebrow appeal seems to mostly come from a mix of that higher literary culture and the lowbrow television culture. He was a personality that Hefner’s readers could no doubt identify with, but also produced texts that could be considered higher culturally and further make Playboy a legitimate periodical. Once again, the satirical humor of the intellectual emerges. The middle-class “playboy” can further develop his ability to effectively mingle as an intellect, using satire — and, in this case, in the form of an accessible, familiar middlebrow icon. In the switch to the lowbrow and “other” category, we found yet another interesting mix of authors. When talking about straight-up lowbrow, genre fiction, there is the small example of Richard Matheson. Matheson is not a big name in writing whatsoever, and most likely falls under Hefner’s category of new authors who he felt should be published. Matheson wrote mostly science fiction and horror, genres of writing that have long been relegated to lowbrow without much more than a thought. Much of Matheson’s resume seems to be in screenwriting, as he wrote numerous sci-fi and horror screenplays, not too mention that a handful of his novels were adapted to the screen. The Shrinking Man was reviewed in the New York Times (rare for a Matheson book) by Villiers Gerson who complained that the novel was full of clichés and called it “distinctly disappointing and second-rate.” Despite the negativity, Playboy did publish its share of science fiction; in fact, there is the Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1966), which chronicles some of the works published. However, the use of such genre fiction was not to make a point that the readers were on a low level; on the contrary, its many of these books that Hefner would view as exciting and adventurous, and a way to forget about life for a while, which are all key to the Playboy Philosophy and the middle-class male reader. Another science fiction writer published in Playboy is Arthur C. Clarke, who was often found in the magazine. Clarke, unlike Matheson, was taken more seriously as a writer despite his focus in sci-fi because he had a strong background in science. In fact, he published a technical paper in 1945 called “Extra-terrestrial Relays” that became the foundation for the creation of satellite communication with geostationary orbits, realized 25 years later. For this he received numerous honors and awards. Throughout his life, Clarke continued both his interest in science and an interest in fiction. He worked with Stanley Kubrick in writing a script for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and shared an Oscar nomination for it. In critical review, Clarke was often heralded as knowing how to keep from using too much technical information and how to make his stories, usually grounded in scientific fact, interesting. Clarke is almost perfect for Playboy’s educational or instructive element, as his work would bring real science and intelligence in a fiction form that was widely accessible. “I Remember Babylon,” published in Playboy in May 1960, sees television, made possible through satellite technology, as bringing about the downfall of Western society. The story does include, relevant to the time in which it was published, a Communist conspiracy plotline. Clarke writes it from the first person, and of course calls upon his knowledge of satellite communications within it. Overall, he would be considered on a more middlebrow level than most science fiction writers, mostly due to his intelligent, technical background. Another genre fiction writer important to Playboy is Ian Fleming, who will be discussed later in more detail, due to his importance to the magazine. Before this however, there are the two writers in the “other” or special interest category, Ludwig Bemelmans and J. Paul Getty. Bemelmans is quite interesting as he’s actually most known for children’s books, notably the “Madeline” series, which has, since its 1939 beginning, always had major popularity. There have been dolls and a motion picture created based on the books, so they have found their way into pop culture. However, he also did write books that were not children’s stories, and he has received some acclaim. Frank Nugent reviewed Dirty Eddie for the New York Times. Dirty Eddie is a Hollywood satire (yet again, the intelligent humor), based on Bemelmans’ stint working as a contract writer for a movie company. Nugent highly praised Bemelmans’ satire and language, two critical praises that would put a writer closer to highbrow. Another Times review, by Orville Prescott, begins by saying, “His squiggly, self-consciously naïve drawings and his whimsically humorous sketches and stories have bloomed in our swankier magazines: Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country and the New Yorker; and collected into book form under such intriguing titles…. they have done very nicely.” Prescott says Bemelmans’ humor “defies analysis” and basically praises the fact that Bemelmans is an acquired taste and has humor that not many people really get. At the end, Prescott calls Bemelmans “sui generis,” meaning “of its own type,” and that there was no one in literature at the time to challenge him for the title. In his reader intro, Hefner includes Bemelmans with Steinbeck in his list of authors that provide “wild and pointed humor.” Gala at the Tour d’Argent seems to be in true Bemelmans style, in terms of his reviewers, as something that those who have acquired a taste for his humor would enjoy. It is about a night club proprietor who allows a millionaire to take out his favorite stripper because the proprietor needs a loan. The story is basically the stripper recounting the evening to the night club owner. She (Gala) talks about where they went, what they ate, and the dialogue between her and the millionaire (Vivanti) as he tries to get her to come home with him and she refuses. Eventually, Vivanti’s chauffer tells Gala of his wife’s jealousy as he is always out she thinks he is out with other women. It turns out the chauffer put the wife in the trunk of his car that particular evening to prove that it is not so, and Gala says to open it, and the wife comes out and forgives the chauffer. That is it for Gala’s story, and at the end, the night club owner “forgives” her, although she can’t hear it because the midday bells are ringing from the tower of Notre Dame. The night club and stripper theme of this story is one clear way it would appeal to Playboy’s editors, but one can also call into question Bemelmans’ background. He worked as a busboy when he was younger, and eventually climbed the ranks until he was a successful restraunteur, and an acclaimed author. It seems this background itself would appeal to the “self-made man” and the ability to be successful despite class or status. That would appeal to the middle-class male readers, especially the younger ones, as a means of hope or even fantasy. Unlike Bemelmans, the other special interest writer to look at, J. Paul Getty, was not really an acclaimed writer; rather, he was a successful entrepreneur. His writings involved politics and economics; he was one of the richest men in the country at that time and something Hefner’s readers could aspire to be. Getty published a plethora of articles about making money, investing that money and becoming independently successful. Getty owned companies that had no stockholders—they were his companies. This idea of being self-reliant and successful is something that can be found in stories by Playboy authors such as Hemingway and the Playboy attitude in general. Getty’s writing was of the instructional kind. However, March 1964’s Living with Labor went beyond instructional, and could appeal to both those men aspiring to be successful, as well as any blue-collar middle-class readers. The essence of the article is found within the opening anecdote, in which Getty describes contracts negotiations with labor union representatives. Though Getty’s “aides” suggested he start off very low and slowly raise the amount he could raise wages, Getty decided that this would lead to excruciating and long negotiations and possibly a poor relationship between the company and the union in the future. Therefore, Getty put together “informational” and “accurate” reports of the company’s status, and proved up front to the labor union that he could only raise wages to half of what it asked; he also showed how wages could go up even more if productivity and profits were to rise. Needless to say, after a recess, the union agreed to the new contract, and future negotiations were just as easy. Getty’s article pushed this balance between what’s good for the company and the needs of the workers, as he argued the best thing for a company to do is to simply live with its labor. This works as both instruction for the aspiring businessmen who read Playboy and hope of better workplace conditions for the blue-collar, union readers. The
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The final significant author to look at is Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels. Three of those novels first reached publication in the U.S. as Playboy serials, and 15 Bond novelettes were also published in the magazine. In Hefner’s introduction to Fleming’s “The Hildebrand Rarity”, he speaks very highly of Fleming and the Bond novels. Hefner highlights the Bond lifestyle, perhaps showing what Playboy readers should aspire to be. [Bond] thrived on a regime of epicurean orgies, perilous chases in custom-made sports cars, ingenious escapes from exotic captivity and monstrously diabolical conspiracies that threatened to destroy the Free World (Hefner 539). Hefner even pointed out how Fleming’s “unprecedented popularity infuriated critics” and that one critic called Dr. No “the nastiest book he had ever read” (539). This doesn’t matter in regards to the Playboy Philosophy, however. Instead, James Bond lives the high life, something the middlebrow readers of Playboy could only imagine—and would wish to imagine. Another important thing to keep in mind when attempting to place Bond novels in within the context of the brows is genre. In the Playboy Reader, the Bond novel is placed under fantasy. The book also includes the genre heading science fiction. Both of these genres are typically seen as being inherently lowbrow (or middlebrow at best), due to their formulaic structure and often simple language. These genres follow Wood’s description of lowbrow novels as being formula fiction with steady, predictable plots and straight-forward narrative. Bond novels can be found in a multitude of genres, including detective, spy thriller, thriller, crime, mystery and fantasy. In Role of the Reader, Umberto Eco discusses the narrative structure of Bond. He found that just about every novel follows basically the same format, which he breaks down in a list format that shuffles only slightly for a couple of the novels (Eco 156). This idea of knowing the general pattern of what lies ahead, but not knowing the specifics, would again agree with Wood’s discussion of the lowbrow novel as being made easy to understand by the readers. This is not to undermine, however, the fact that many sophisticated readers still enjoy Bond novels. As Eco put it: Fleming also pleases the sophisticated readers who here distinguish, with a feeling of aesthetic pleasure, the purity of the primitive epic impudently and maliciously translated into current terms and who applaud in Fleming the cultured man, whom they recognize as one of themselves, naturally the most clever and broadminded (163). Another way to see how Fleming’s work is more sophisticated than the typical work of those genres is by looking at literary technique. Eco compares a Bond passage to that of a passage in a book by typical genre writer Mickey Spillane; the Bond passage has much more subtle language (164). Also, Fleming has a “more baroque feeling for the image” and a minute attention to detail (164-165). He uses realistic narrative to describe in detail things the reader is likely to be familiar with; things the reader “has accomplished, may accomplish, or would like to accomplish” (167). This attention to detail and resulting realism is something important to Wood in her argument about what makes middlebrow literature. Eco overall gives Fleming a higher intellectual credibility than he would typical lowbrow works; he makes it clear, however, that the Bond novels still aren’t the crème-de-la-crème of literature. His assessment, coupled with Wood’s definition of the middlebrow novel, make it safe to say that Fleming’s Bond novels can be placed in the middlebrow literary culture. As a final note to that evaluation, one can go to the “Reading Bond” chapter of Bond and Beyond by Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott. They discussed the relationship between Bond novels and the traditional British imperial spy thrillers, which “formed the most influential culturally active textual backdrop against which the Bond novels were initially read” (85). Cultural allusions are typically a technique employed in highbrow or middlebrow literature, since lowbrow would steer clear of anything that may not fall under the reader’s knowledge, thus causing dissonance, as Wood would put it. Bennett and Woollacott point to the idea of cultural references as desirable to the middlebrow reader: The evidence of reviews from the late 1950s, for example, suggests that, for middlebrow readers, its most immediate consequence was the production of yet another set of pleasures of culture and knowledge in which the reader, by spotting the appropriate allusions, demonstrated his connoisseurship of the spy-thriller genre” (85). It’s thought that the middlebrow reader will feel a sense of sophistication and intellectuality because he can recognize certain references within a text. There’s no doubt Playboy heads in that direction as it instructs its readers. This goes back to the need for Playboy readers to aspire to living the high-life, the kind found in Bond. Hefner made this aspiration quite clear in that introduction to the Bond novelette in the Playboy Reader, as he played up Bond’s classy cars, ability to get women, and his sophisticated, yet action-oriented lifestyle. In many instances where the life of Hugh Hefner is examined, James Bond has to be mentioned. Today, Hefner lives in an expensive mansion, with endless rows of the finest clothes and his seven platinum blonde girlfriends. The Bond novels were made very accessible to Playboy readers to show them how to be sophisticated like Bond, and like a typical “playboy” should be. This entire interaction between the magazine, a developing class of males and different types of literature shows something of how different cultural elements can work together. Even specific pieces that may be considered high, middle or low, or something off-the-charts, are able to mix and help create something distinct. In thinking about this in wider terms, as far as the existing, fast-growing, ever-changing magazine market, it is a wonder just how far interactions go—magazines obviously have target markets and demographics, but just where does “targeting” end and “creating” begin? Bibliography
Aldridge, John W. “Highbrow Authors and Middlebrow Books.” Playboy April 1964: 168+. Aldridge, John W. “Speaking of Books: The Novel and the Critic.” New York Times Book Review 6 March 1964: 2+. Allen, Steve. “Everybody Hates David Starbuck.” Playboy Dec. 1958: 59-60, 81, 84. Baldwin, James. “Manchild.” Playboy Jan. 1966: 101-102, 211-214. Bemelmans, Ludwig. “Gala at the Tour D’Argent.” Playboy Dec. 1962: 124, 156, 160-164. Bennett, Tony and Janet Woollacott. Bond and Beyond: the Political Career of a Popular Hero. New York: Methuen, 1987. Burgess, Anthony. “Speaking of Books: A Good Read.” New York Times Book Review 21 August 1966: 2+. Clarke, Arthur C. “I Remember Babylon.” Playboy May 1960: 73, 94-100. Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1979. Gerson, Walter M., and Sander H. Lund. “Playboy Magazine: Sophisticated Smut or Social Revolution?” Journal of Popular Culture 1967. 218-227. Getty, J. Paul. “Living with Labor.” Playboy March 1964: 85-86, 141-142. Gold, Herbert. “Instead of Love, the Fix.” Rev. of Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs. New York Times Book Review 25 Nov. 1962: 4+. Gold, Herbert. “What’s Become of Your Creature?” Playboy April 1959: 21-22, 32, 40, 58, 84-88. Hefner, Hugh M. The Playboy Philosophy. Chicago: HMH Publishing, 1962-1963. Hefner, Hugh M., Ed. The Twelfth Anniversary Playboy Reader. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1965. Jones, James. “Just Like the Girl…that married dear old dad.” Playboy Jan. 1958: 23, 34, 42, 69-70. Knickerbocker, Conrad. “One Night on a Kansas Farm.” Rev. of In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. New York Times Book Review 16 Jan. 1966: 1+. Malamud, Bernard. “Naked Nude.” Playboy Aug. 1963: 49-50, 52, 122-124. Matheson, Richard. “The Distributor.” Playboy March 1958: 17-18, 20, 24, 34. McDonald, Dwight. Against the American Grain. New York: Random House, 1962. Miller, Henry. “I Defy You.” Playboy Jan. 1962: 102. Osgerby, Bill. Playboys in Paradise: Masculinity, Youth and Leisure-style in Modern America. New York: Berg, 2001. Poirier, Richard. “Embattled Underground.” Rev. of The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon. New York Times Book Review 1 May 1966: 5+. Radway, Janice. “The Book-of-the-Month Club and the General Reader: On the Uses of ‘Serious Fiction’.” Critical Inquiry Spring 1988: 516-538. Rev. of In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. Playboy Feb. 1966: 30. Rev. of Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs. Playboy Jan. 1963: 34. Rev. of The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon. Playboy April 1966: 26. Rubin, Joan Shelley. The Making of Middlebrow Culture. Chapel Hill: The Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1992. Steinbeck, John. “The Short-short Story of Mankind.” Playboy April 1958: 32-34. Weyr, Thomas. Reaching for Paradise: the Playboy vision of America. New York: Times Books, 1978. Wood, Ruth Pirsig. Lolita in Peyton Place. Ed. Jerome Nadelhaft. New York: Garland, 1995. |
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