The Last Magazine: A Novel by Michael Hastings Page B

about?
    Regards,
    SB
    This really, really is the big time now.

INTERLUDE
I’M VERY SORRY
    I think it’s about time for me to apologize to all of my colleagues.
    I’m sorry.
    There, that’s out of the way.
    I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’m a nice guy, at heart, and I have to say it weighs on me whether or not to write about everything that happened at
The Magazine
.
    Thomas Jefferson said something once: “Don’t mistake the facts for truth.”
    Actually, I said that, not Jefferson, but attributing my thoughts to him gave it more authority for a second.
    It’s true that without
The Magazine
, I’d never have gotten a platform.
The Magazine
gave me my start. Biting the hand that feeds and the like.
    In my defense, I’d like to point out that we at
The Magazine
are always doing unseemly things, always taking other people’s experiences and actions and desires and totally mangling them for our purposes. An intellectual journalist once wrote a book about it—I think she was working for the same magazine as Brennan Toddly. She said that what we do is morally indefensible. Yeah, probably, but who doesanything that’s really morally defensible these days? Politicians? Lawyers? Janitors maybe? Should we all be janitors? Construction workers? Cops? EMTs? Teachers?
    Okay, maybe they are doing morally defensible things. Regardless, other people’s experiences sell ads, make good copy, the usual. We’re always sticking the long knife into someone’s back, and with the right editing, we always manage to give that knife a little twist—we’re professionals, after all.
    Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit. Maybe my colleagues will read the excerpts (very little chance they’ll buy the hardcover) and think, yes, that Hastings kid, he got it exactly right. Does anyone ever read something that’s been written about them and think, “Yep, that motherfucker nailed me—all my faults and hopes and insecurities and dreams and all”?
    Maybe they’ll think, “What an asshole. Look at this, selling out his employer to make a quick buck.” (Trust me: I make more working for
The Magazine
than writing a memoir about working for a newsmagazine. We’re not Condé Nast, after all.)
    Maybe some co-workers will read the book and think it’s okay. And others will think it’s shit. That’s what I guess is called “a mixed critical reaction.” My guess is that I won’t have much future at the magazine once word gets out that I’m trying to publish this—which makes me a little sad. They have feelings, and I have feelings too.
    So really, I’m sorry. Mr. Peoria, Mr. Berman, Mr. Patel, Jerry, Sam, Gary, Anna—it’s not personal, or at least it’s only as personal as anything else.
    It’s snowing still, December 2005. I’ve switched to drinking bottles of San Pellegrino mineral water because I like the feel of the weight of the bottle in my hand. Almost like I’m actually drinking.
    I just got an email from Human Resources saying that the magazine is about to lay off one-third of its staff, thanks to the difficulteconomic climate and “the rapidly changing nature of our industry.” So if the general thesis of the book is true, encapsulated in the title—that this could actually be the last magazine of its kind—it’s hard to jeopardize a future if the place you’re working for has none.
    Which reminds me of a speech Henry the EIC gives to the new interns. He says he keeps a cartoon in his office that’s from that middle-highbrow magazine, published in 1981. It’s a dinosaur reading our magazine. We’re a dinosaur, get it? Ready for extinction. The point, he told us, twenty years later, is that critics and naysayers have been heralding the decline of
The Magazine
forever and it’s never come to pass.
    There’s that other saying, too. I think Harry Truman said it: “If you’ve worked in the kitchen, you won’t eat at the restaurant.” But if it’s a five-star restaurant, with a couple of