Playboy To Eliminate Nude Images From Print Magazine
October 12 2015 10:29 PM
Nudes Are Old New At Playboy
| New York Times |
Reading? Really?
Actually, yeah. Reading.
The first Playboy I remember getting my hands on came from a teacher at a public school in my hometown over 40 years ago. This teacher liked my social (i.e., political) enthusiasms and my writing and my interest in literature that was way over my head and figured I needed some exposure to some important contemporary writing.
Fortunately, for me, this teacher subscribed to Playboy and not The Partisan Review.
Ten minutes ago I couldn’t have told you what was in that first Playboy I was given (loaned, actually) but I remember the cover vividly so it didn’t take many seconds to track it down on the Internet: fiction by Graham Greene, Irwin Shaw and Tennessee Williams; non-fiction by David Halberstam, Senator George McGovern, Cesar Chavez, Julian Bond, Justice William Douglas, and UN Ambassador & Justice Arthur Goldberg; and humor by Mort Sahl, for chrissakes.
So there was this steady underground stream of Playboys flowing to me there for awhile. And I really did read the articles. Really.
Some of the pictures weren’t bad, either.
Later I was a subscriber. Never got a key but was always tantalized by the idea of being a member and walking into the New Orleans Playboy Club to pick up the latest issue gratis.
And yeah, Hefner was always sort of creepy, long before he lounged into his dotage, long before he got really creepy, but Playboy was always important and always culturally vital and always required reading.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
I have no clue when it was that I last opened a Playboy. Back in the 80s probably, when the magazine and the empire were already slipping out of profitability and sadly into irrelevance.
But for about 20 years there, in the 50s and through the 60s, it really was something. It was quite a ride and always quite a read.
Really.
| New York Times |
“For a generation of American men, reading Playboy was a cultural rite, an illicit thrill consumed by flashlight.”
Reading? Really?
Actually, yeah. Reading.
The first Playboy I remember getting my hands on came from a teacher at a public school in my hometown over 40 years ago. This teacher liked my social (i.e., political) enthusiasms and my writing and my interest in literature that was way over my head and figured I needed some exposure to some important contemporary writing.
Fortunately, for me, this teacher subscribed to Playboy and not The Partisan Review.
Ten minutes ago I couldn’t have told you what was in that first Playboy I was given (loaned, actually) but I remember the cover vividly so it didn’t take many seconds to track it down on the Internet: fiction by Graham Greene, Irwin Shaw and Tennessee Williams; non-fiction by David Halberstam, Senator George McGovern, Cesar Chavez, Julian Bond, Justice William Douglas, and UN Ambassador & Justice Arthur Goldberg; and humor by Mort Sahl, for chrissakes.
So there was this steady underground stream of Playboys flowing to me there for awhile. And I really did read the articles. Really.
Some of the pictures weren’t bad, either.
Later I was a subscriber. Never got a key but was always tantalized by the idea of being a member and walking into the New Orleans Playboy Club to pick up the latest issue gratis.
And yeah, Hefner was always sort of creepy, long before he lounged into his dotage, long before he got really creepy, but Playboy was always important and always culturally vital and always required reading.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
I have no clue when it was that I last opened a Playboy. Back in the 80s probably, when the magazine and the empire were already slipping out of profitability and sadly into irrelevance.
But for about 20 years there, in the 50s and through the 60s, it really was something. It was quite a ride and always quite a read.
Really.