The Time of Their Lives (2010)

But Hadden did not stop with the Iliad. He made exhaustive lists of other techniques that he proposed for the magazine as it evolved. Occupations, origins, and personality types became titles: “Teacher Scopes,” “Editor Mencken,” “Demagog Hitler.” Most of all, Hadden would encourage staffers to use vivid words. People in Time were “famed,” not “famous”; “potent,” not “powerful”; “blatant,” not “obvious.” They “ogled” rather than “looked,” “strode” rather than “walked.” And rhyming and alliteration were always popular, as in the frequent use of “late, great” to describe the recently deceased.

Especially in its first years, Time could be sophomoric, pompous, irritating, pedantic, even ridiculous. But if its preposterous stylistic excesses were all that Time had to distinguish itself, the magazine would never have succeeded. To most of those who would become *Time’*s large and rapidly expanding readership—even many who were annoyed occasionally by its idiosyncrasies—the publication was also witty, entertaining, and informative.

Speaking “Time-ese”

Hadden would use his oversize pencils and his gruff, booming voice to browbeat the staff into meeting his literary demands*.* And this standardization of style was often stifling to serious writers. John O’Hara, the soon-to-be-famous novelist, spent a few months writing for Time in the late 20s and then fled to The New Yorker. Such departures, although usually after longer periods of service than O’Hara’s, were common. But other writers settled comfortably into the Time system, came to value its distinctive kind of writing, and remained for years. “Time-ese” or “Time-style”—as the magazine’s writing was often called, sometimes mockingly, sometimes affectionately—was, if nothing else, contagious, and not just within the magazine itself. Words that Time invented, retrieved from obscurity, or borrowed from foreign languages became enduring parts of modern English: “tycoon,” “pundit,” “socialite,” “kudos.”

As singular as *Time’*s language, and closely related to it, were the magazine’s opinions and attitudes. Luce and Hadden had promised from the start that Time would have “no axe to grind,” and in many respects, particularly in the beginning, they kept that vow. Time did not clearly favor any political party, and Luce, at least, was unsure in the 1920s of whether he preferred Democrats or Republicans—although later he would use his magazines to support Republican presidential candidates, promote China’s pro-Western leader Chiang Kai-shek, and christen the era “The American Century,” the title of Luce’s famous 1941 Life essay.

Time, finally, was also distinctive for its fascination with powerful men and women. “People just aren’t interesting in the mass,” Luce once said. “It’s only individuals who are exciting.” For decades, beginning with the first issue, virtually every cover of Time carried a portrait of an important man or, on rare occasions, woman (and once, in 1928, a basset hound). The magazine chose a “Man of the Year” annually beginning with Charles Lindbergh for 1927. (A “Woman of the Year” was named only twice in *Time’*s first 50 years: Wallis Simpson in 1937 and Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.) Cover portraits—black-and-white drawings and photographs (which were first surrounded by the Time “red border” in 1927)—were gradually replaced by color images starting in 1928, becoming a signature feature of the magazine. For three generations, being selected for the cover of Time became a career watershed among the famous—and infamous.

For Harry Luce, the last weeks of 1922 were doubly stressful as he hurtled toward producing the first issue. Not only was he working with Hadden to shape the content of the magazine, Luce was also working more or less alone to ensure that Time would be able to function as a business. This was an area of the enterprise in which Hadden took almost no interest. Luce, however, proved to be a very good businessman, somewhat to his dismay—since, like Brit, his original interest had been primarily editorial. (“Now the Bratch is really the editor of TIME,” he wrote, “and I, alas, alas, alas, am business manager. . . . Of course no one but Brit and I know this!”) He would write to Lila that December:

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/2wIHHHP