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The Accidental Life: An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers
An Amazon Best Book of 2016
A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are).
You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the magazines he has Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he’s known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny—playing “acid golf” with Hunter S. Thompson, practicing brinksmanship with David Carr and Steve Jobs, working the European fashion scene with Liz Tilberis, pitching TV pilots with Richard Price.
Here, too, is an expert’s practical advice on how to recruit—and keep—high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works, and what it takes to write well.
Taking us from the raucous days of New Journalism to today’s digital landscape, McDonell argues that the need for clear storytelling from trustworthy news sources has never been stronger. Says Jeffrey “Every time I run into Terry, I think how great it would be to have dinner with him. Hear about the writers he's known and edited over the years, what the magazine business was like back then, how it's changed and where it's going, inside info about Edward Abbey, Jim Harrison, Annie Proulx, old New York, and the Swimsuit issue. That dinner is this book.”
A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are).
You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the magazines he has Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he’s known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny—playing “acid golf” with Hunter S. Thompson, practicing brinksmanship with David Carr and Steve Jobs, working the European fashion scene with Liz Tilberis, pitching TV pilots with Richard Price.
Here, too, is an expert’s practical advice on how to recruit—and keep—high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works, and what it takes to write well.
Taking us from the raucous days of New Journalism to today’s digital landscape, McDonell argues that the need for clear storytelling from trustworthy news sources has never been stronger. Says Jeffrey “Every time I run into Terry, I think how great it would be to have dinner with him. Hear about the writers he's known and edited over the years, what the magazine business was like back then, how it's changed and where it's going, inside info about Edward Abbey, Jim Harrison, Annie Proulx, old New York, and the Swimsuit issue. That dinner is this book.”
384 pages, Hardcover
First published August 2, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
June 7, 2017
Full disclosure: this was a free ARC that arrived in the mail. The cover letter simply said that I had won it, and to be sure to add it to my shelf. I may have won it in a Goodreads giveaway, but I don't recall ever receiving an email from them stating this, though I vaguely recall entering the giveaway. In any case, I got it for free. Receiving unexpected free books in the mail isn't really a problem so much as a lifelong dream.
So, what about this book, Stewart? Well, the subtitle describes it fairly accurately. McDonell worked in the magazine industry for years, both as writer and editor, including stints at Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Outside, and Rolling Stone. There are numerous anecdotes about people like Hunter Thompson, Rick Reilly, Jann Wenner, George Plimpton, Edward Abbey and more. This book has been directly responsible for adding dozens of books to my already burgeoning reading list. McDonell has an ear for a great anecdote, and has been fortunate enough to know some highly interesting people. If it has a fault, it is that it runs a bit long. I found myself getting weary long before the end. Pacing, maybe? Perhaps, instead of reading straight through, I would have been better off dipping into it now and then, and then reading something else for a bit as a mental pallette cleanser. But it's hard to resist binging as the Wow! factor is high. All in all, an excellent book! Highly recommended.
So, what about this book, Stewart? Well, the subtitle describes it fairly accurately. McDonell worked in the magazine industry for years, both as writer and editor, including stints at Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Outside, and Rolling Stone. There are numerous anecdotes about people like Hunter Thompson, Rick Reilly, Jann Wenner, George Plimpton, Edward Abbey and more. This book has been directly responsible for adding dozens of books to my already burgeoning reading list. McDonell has an ear for a great anecdote, and has been fortunate enough to know some highly interesting people. If it has a fault, it is that it runs a bit long. I found myself getting weary long before the end. Pacing, maybe? Perhaps, instead of reading straight through, I would have been better off dipping into it now and then, and then reading something else for a bit as a mental pallette cleanser. But it's hard to resist binging as the Wow! factor is high. All in all, an excellent book! Highly recommended.
August 28, 2016
I really wanted to like this book. The insider stories of writers and editors is a great idea, but instead of feeling excited to learn the inner workings of an industry I have embraced (on a much smaller scale), this book stirred my frustration. Why?
Over his long and varied career, the author worked with hundred of writers, but this book is a boy's club with story after story of boorish behavior -- drinking, drugs, and too much Hunter S. Thompson (hasn't the cult of Hunter run its course?).
A few women are highlighted (as "beautiful" wives who put up with their "creative" spouses) but scant chapters are devoted to the great work of women writers, while nearly every chapter is underscored with the literary contributions, and oversized escapades, of men. Over decades of magazine editing, the author has no words for great female writers?
Was this book written in 1950? No, it was published this month, with rave reviews from, you guessed it, male writers.
Over his long and varied career, the author worked with hundred of writers, but this book is a boy's club with story after story of boorish behavior -- drinking, drugs, and too much Hunter S. Thompson (hasn't the cult of Hunter run its course?).
A few women are highlighted (as "beautiful" wives who put up with their "creative" spouses) but scant chapters are devoted to the great work of women writers, while nearly every chapter is underscored with the literary contributions, and oversized escapades, of men. Over decades of magazine editing, the author has no words for great female writers?
Was this book written in 1950? No, it was published this month, with rave reviews from, you guessed it, male writers.
May 19, 2022
Really excellent memoir, by a magazine editor who really, really loves good writing, and got to edit, and hang out with, some of the best writers of the late 20th/early 21st C. He writes well too. Not to be missed! Probably best to read it spread out over several days.
The first couple of high-rated reviews here, by Stewart Tame and ck, will give you a good idea of the book. Very high marks from me: I give out few 5-star ratings! Not to be missed, if it sounds even remotely like your kind of thing.
The first couple of high-rated reviews here, by Stewart Tame and ck, will give you a good idea of the book. Very high marks from me: I give out few 5-star ratings! Not to be missed, if it sounds even remotely like your kind of thing.
May 20, 2016
[ARC courtesy Knopf via Amazon Vine program]
Pages of a Life
“I only had three rules,” Terry McDonell writes of his career as an editor. “Force nothing. Be clear. You can always go deeper.”
For all their brevity–nine words arrayed in three sentences–McDonell’s rules highlight the chasm between serviceable stories and riveting ones. In The Accidental Life: An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers, he shares stories about stories. There are moments of wryness and humor and self-deprecation, which may be what readers expect. You no doubt will recognize more than a few names, and will come away with some insights.
But the reason you need to read this book is to immerse yourself in McDonell’s ability to lay bare the essence of an editor’s life. The blurring between career and self, the certainty of change, and the redemption that comes from work well done.
McDonell describes the high that comes when writer and subject mesh and the words flow, and knowing you’ve put the two together. And sometimes, that you’ve coaxed the writer into piercing his soul, just a bit, for the additional details that make his words sing on the page. McDonell describes this process with empathy. “The best writers all knew how to do that,” he writes. “You didn’t edit into their pieces any more than you edited their sensibilities. What you did was ask for more detail.”
Pages of a Life
“I only had three rules,” Terry McDonell writes of his career as an editor. “Force nothing. Be clear. You can always go deeper.”
For all their brevity–nine words arrayed in three sentences–McDonell’s rules highlight the chasm between serviceable stories and riveting ones. In The Accidental Life: An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers, he shares stories about stories. There are moments of wryness and humor and self-deprecation, which may be what readers expect. You no doubt will recognize more than a few names, and will come away with some insights.
But the reason you need to read this book is to immerse yourself in McDonell’s ability to lay bare the essence of an editor’s life. The blurring between career and self, the certainty of change, and the redemption that comes from work well done.
McDonell describes the high that comes when writer and subject mesh and the words flow, and knowing you’ve put the two together. And sometimes, that you’ve coaxed the writer into piercing his soul, just a bit, for the additional details that make his words sing on the page. McDonell describes this process with empathy. “The best writers all knew how to do that,” he writes. “You didn’t edit into their pieces any more than you edited their sensibilities. What you did was ask for more detail.”
Read
August 13, 2017This is a pretty larky read, kind of like a compendium of yearbooks from a big drunk fraternity. It's very what-a-life-we-led-back-in-the-day, ho-ho-you-shoulda-seen-it, bet-ya-wish-you'd-been there, with a hint of do-you-think-this-is-shocking-well-I-can-tell-you-the-whole-story-but-then-I'd-have-to-kill-you and a strong note of what-a-chore-it-was-to-live-inside-the-golden-tower-of-the-mind-you-have-no-idea. That's fine. He obviously felt strong tender feelings for many of these fellows, and felt strongly in other ways about others. There's titillating little glimpses into Big Literary Lives. Also, it's pretty damn interesting to trace an arc in one man's life from getting Edward Albee's stories for Outside Magazine filed by pay-phone outside a bar in Whattheheck, Arizona to the multi-platform business model of a digital-age branded franchise experience that is the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue [Known to the insiders at Time, Inc as 'Swimsuit,' but we (the insiders at the inside of inside) just called it 'Swim,' of course]. Also interesting: no women! A wife here and there. Some lovelies in swimsuits. Elaine from Elaine's but mainly men doing the manliest stuff. That's the untold story right there. Could tell it to you but you really don't want to know.
September 2, 2017
An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers is the subtitle of Terry McDonell's memoir. He calls it The Accidental Life because he began his career as a photographer. Instead of following a straight path, though, as he describes it, he tried writing a novel, tried making a documentary film. Nothing was working until he became a combination reporter/editor at San Francisco Magazine. In the years since he's worked on and edited some of the biggest magazines in America, including Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Newsweek. For me the chapters on writers are the most interesting parts of the book. McDonell's accidental editing life has allowed him to become friends with and swim in the same currents as some of America's best writers. His material on them is richly anecdotal and honest. He has many wonderful stories about each, about what it's like to spend time with them, about how they approach writing, particularly for his magazines. Here are chapters about playing golf with Hunter S. Thompson and hunting with Richard Ford and fishing with Jim Harrison. But Peter Matthiessen is here, and so is James Salter, George Plimpton, and Thomas McGuane along with a generous broadcasting of others we're familiar with. I didn't know, for instance, that Jimmy Buffett can write, but McDonell likes his work very much. All these people are friends, too, and so they're fondly remembered and written about, even their warts. My sense is that this kind of remembering of writers he's known and worked with accounts for over half of the book. A good thing--I was less interested in how to put together a magazine's layout or how a submitted piece is cut in half over the writer's objections or even in how the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue is photographed. The writers and writing are the meat of it.
March 16, 2018
Terry McDonell’s The Accidental Life: An Editor’s Notes on Writing and Writers is insightful, interesting, blunt, witty and packed with a selection from the A List of fiction and non-fiction writers from the last handful of decades.
Scan the contents, there you go, and you’ll get an idea of the wordsmiths McDonell edited during a colorful career.
Do I have to list them? It might fill this whole review. Jim Harrison. Ed Abbey. Peter Matthiessen. Tom McGuane. Richard Ford. James Salter. Jan Wenner. George Plimpton. Hunter Thompson. Richard Price. (I’m scratching the surface. Yes, diversity factor is low.) On and on.
McDonell’s credits? Try Sports Illustrated, Men’s Journal, Rolling Stone. He was editor-in-chief of Esquire. There’s also a stint at Newsweek and a magazine he started called Smart. There’s the fact that he was founding editor of Outside and Rocky Mountain magazine. Is that enough? No. McDonell is a screenwriter and novelist, too.
The title alone—The Accidental Life—gives you the sense that despite the bright credits McDonell does not think of himself as anything special. Only a guy who cares about language. “Editing is about ideas, but it is mechanical, too. You have to get under the hood of the language, and editors use many tools.” One of those tools is word counts—knowing the length of something you’re about to read helps you understand its shape and pace, he argues. (Thus the title of every piece is followed by the word length to come.)
Most writers like to overshoot their assigned word length. “No writer I ever edited wanted to go short, anyway. Neither do I, but I also know that the best pieces seem to find their own length. That’s the alchemy.”
Reading The Accidental Life you hope some gold dust will fall on your keyboard, just by reading about what it is like to work with all these feisty, funky, mostly inscrutable bunch of truth tellers. You hope for some “how to” list of handy tips. How to edit. How to reject. How to know the right story to report—and when. How to cut.
Well, not quite. The editing nuggets are there. They are in the mix. But The Accidental Life is mostly stories about big time writers and McDonell’s relationship with them. (Just a hunch but I think those relationships is where the editing begins.) Along the way, McDonell riffs on photography, headlines, layout, the changing nature of the business, and what is like to be around Sports Illustrated during swimsuit season (February) and some of the jaw-dropping numbers for sales when there is so much female skin on the cover.
The Editing 101 stuff is there, but McDonell deals out those bits around stories (good ones) of his celebrity writer pals.
“Good editors, like doctors, develop a bedside manner. My editing was full of questions—all the same question, really. What is the story. What’s the point of it? What do these sentences mean? Do they mean what you want them to mean? What if I told you they read like walk-ons in a Pirandello play?”
This is from a brief entry, “Bibliomemoir.”
More: “To diagnose is an excellent verb for editors to keep in mind. But what are you trying to say? Is not always an easy question, and the story isn’t always what the writer says it is. I thought often about what it was like to read the writers I knew best, how direct their prose seemed and how the work spoke for itself, yet that made them even more mysterious. It was that way with all of the writers whose work I loved.”
McDonell celebrates certain passages—and quotes them. Whether fiction or non-fiction, he seemed to be on a quest for truth tellers, whether the prose is fiction or non. Sure there is a difference between what comes out of the imagination and the stories a reporter tells, but McDonnell seems interested, in both cases, in sharp observers who don’t flinch from hard truths. It’s a “commitment to revealing the shadings and complexities of the human condition,” he writes in the “Fiction, Nonfiction” entry.
I only hope The Accidental Life isn’t a reflection on what will be considered a golden age of journalism—the second half of the 20th century and maybe the first decade or so of the 21st century before The Internets gutted the budgets of big-city daily newspapers and magazines.
McDonell was there in the prime of magazine publishing—limos, fat expense accounts and fatter advances. These tidbits may be fantasy land for someone writing long-form today.
I'm writing this on the day that The Denver Post announced yet another wallop to its newsroom staff—another 30 staffers slashed from the newsroom, down to 70 total reporters and editors—it’s hard to not think back to the day when we took steady streams of good daily journalism for granted. And it's hard to imagine how many writers and reporters won't get a chance to develop their craft simply because the jobs aren't there.
Do you write? The Accidental Life is a must-read. Do you read? Ditto. Some suggest to read these entries at random. I started at the front and read straight through, glued the whole time and wanting to go back and pick up some old Jim Harrison stuff or early Hunter S. Thompson.
Great read.
++
Final note: I listened on audio. James Culp’s blunt, punchy narration was terrific.
Scan the contents, there you go, and you’ll get an idea of the wordsmiths McDonell edited during a colorful career.
Do I have to list them? It might fill this whole review. Jim Harrison. Ed Abbey. Peter Matthiessen. Tom McGuane. Richard Ford. James Salter. Jan Wenner. George Plimpton. Hunter Thompson. Richard Price. (I’m scratching the surface. Yes, diversity factor is low.) On and on.
McDonell’s credits? Try Sports Illustrated, Men’s Journal, Rolling Stone. He was editor-in-chief of Esquire. There’s also a stint at Newsweek and a magazine he started called Smart. There’s the fact that he was founding editor of Outside and Rocky Mountain magazine. Is that enough? No. McDonell is a screenwriter and novelist, too.
The title alone—The Accidental Life—gives you the sense that despite the bright credits McDonell does not think of himself as anything special. Only a guy who cares about language. “Editing is about ideas, but it is mechanical, too. You have to get under the hood of the language, and editors use many tools.” One of those tools is word counts—knowing the length of something you’re about to read helps you understand its shape and pace, he argues. (Thus the title of every piece is followed by the word length to come.)
Most writers like to overshoot their assigned word length. “No writer I ever edited wanted to go short, anyway. Neither do I, but I also know that the best pieces seem to find their own length. That’s the alchemy.”
Reading The Accidental Life you hope some gold dust will fall on your keyboard, just by reading about what it is like to work with all these feisty, funky, mostly inscrutable bunch of truth tellers. You hope for some “how to” list of handy tips. How to edit. How to reject. How to know the right story to report—and when. How to cut.
Well, not quite. The editing nuggets are there. They are in the mix. But The Accidental Life is mostly stories about big time writers and McDonell’s relationship with them. (Just a hunch but I think those relationships is where the editing begins.) Along the way, McDonell riffs on photography, headlines, layout, the changing nature of the business, and what is like to be around Sports Illustrated during swimsuit season (February) and some of the jaw-dropping numbers for sales when there is so much female skin on the cover.
The Editing 101 stuff is there, but McDonell deals out those bits around stories (good ones) of his celebrity writer pals.
“Good editors, like doctors, develop a bedside manner. My editing was full of questions—all the same question, really. What is the story. What’s the point of it? What do these sentences mean? Do they mean what you want them to mean? What if I told you they read like walk-ons in a Pirandello play?”
This is from a brief entry, “Bibliomemoir.”
More: “To diagnose is an excellent verb for editors to keep in mind. But what are you trying to say? Is not always an easy question, and the story isn’t always what the writer says it is. I thought often about what it was like to read the writers I knew best, how direct their prose seemed and how the work spoke for itself, yet that made them even more mysterious. It was that way with all of the writers whose work I loved.”
McDonell celebrates certain passages—and quotes them. Whether fiction or non-fiction, he seemed to be on a quest for truth tellers, whether the prose is fiction or non. Sure there is a difference between what comes out of the imagination and the stories a reporter tells, but McDonnell seems interested, in both cases, in sharp observers who don’t flinch from hard truths. It’s a “commitment to revealing the shadings and complexities of the human condition,” he writes in the “Fiction, Nonfiction” entry.
I only hope The Accidental Life isn’t a reflection on what will be considered a golden age of journalism—the second half of the 20th century and maybe the first decade or so of the 21st century before The Internets gutted the budgets of big-city daily newspapers and magazines.
McDonell was there in the prime of magazine publishing—limos, fat expense accounts and fatter advances. These tidbits may be fantasy land for someone writing long-form today.
I'm writing this on the day that The Denver Post announced yet another wallop to its newsroom staff—another 30 staffers slashed from the newsroom, down to 70 total reporters and editors—it’s hard to not think back to the day when we took steady streams of good daily journalism for granted. And it's hard to imagine how many writers and reporters won't get a chance to develop their craft simply because the jobs aren't there.
Do you write? The Accidental Life is a must-read. Do you read? Ditto. Some suggest to read these entries at random. I started at the front and read straight through, glued the whole time and wanting to go back and pick up some old Jim Harrison stuff or early Hunter S. Thompson.
Great read.
++
Final note: I listened on audio. James Culp’s blunt, punchy narration was terrific.
August 2, 2017
It's like sitting down in a bar with the ultimate insider and listening to his stories about some of America's greatest (male) writers.
July 5, 2026
66 words.
This came suggested by my friend and colleague, who is the editor of our magazine. Did not disappoint, despite my not being familiar with Terry. As a writer and editor myself, I adore writing about our craft, and this did not disappoint. Lots of insights and advice, especially as I embark on writing my first-ever celebrity profile for said magazine.
Listened to the audiobook via Libby.
End it.
This came suggested by my friend and colleague, who is the editor of our magazine. Did not disappoint, despite my not being familiar with Terry. As a writer and editor myself, I adore writing about our craft, and this did not disappoint. Lots of insights and advice, especially as I embark on writing my first-ever celebrity profile for said magazine.
Listened to the audiobook via Libby.
End it.
May 31, 2018
Ugh. Terry McDonell reminds me why I did not like so many people in literary circles in the 1970's. He is the original smart aleck and endlessly scores off the people who surround him in hopes that he will advance their writing career.
Double ugh.
Double ugh.
July 3, 2017
McDonell does what a good editor is supposed to do—let his writers shine. For fans of magazines' glory days and the writers that came with it—Hunter Thompson, George Plimpton, Jim Harrison, etc—or journalism nerds looking to learn a thing or two about the business, this is a must-read.
December 7, 2020
I wasn't aware of Terry McDonell but I sure was aware of the magazines and the authors of the books that he edited.Some fascinating and very humorous stories about some of my favourites Jim Harrison,George Plimpton,Tom McGuane,Hunter S Thompson and soon to be favourites like Richard Ford.What I Like about works like this is that I feel as if I'm accompanying him on his trips and visits with all the authors.I guess that's part of what great editors do,as well as humanizing celebrities.
March 2, 2017
Terry McDonnell was a renowned Editor of 13 magazines over his career in the business: Rolling Stone, Esquire, Sports Illustrated & US (before it became a weekly). He meet pretty much every writer that there was. Knew about all of them. Played Acid Golf with Hunter S. Thompson, went fishing with Jim Harrison, drank loads with George Plimpton. It goes on. But this really isn't too much about those experiences. Listening to him talk his craft, from mastheads, to ledes, structural and physical layouts of a magazine, to delegating whatever power to someone else, to getting the job, to running a fucking mag that we all gawk at standing in line at the supermarket. Very informative. Highly recommend to those interested in pursuing the field, or those who have, and those not familiar with McDonnell's publishing mind.
August 18, 2018
Thought provoking, dense, wild collection of essays and recollections on the editing, partying, and collaborations with literary giants of the late 20th Century. I’m building a reading list from this book, so many greats I haven’t read or haven’t read enough.
August 30, 2016
McDonell's love of writers and the craft soaks the pages of this book. He has spent his life with the written word and his style, prose and storytelling shows it. There are great stories here - there is something comforting in learning that some of my favorite authors can be "prickly" during the editing process - and many of those stories involve excesses of alcohol and some raucous behavior. I didn't recognize all the authors; I don't read "Sports Illustrated" and some of the genres he edited are not of interest, but I valued the discussion of the process.
This isn't a book about writing, per se, and it is certainly not a how-to, but there is much valuable advice hidden among the recollections and gossip. He understands how to craft a narrative and that comes through. There are many quotes - well-chosen and brief - that help to hammer home whatever theme he is exploring. The citations show how powerful a few select words can be.
If I have one complaint, it is that women are virtually absent from this book. I get that professional writing was (and in some sad ways, still is) a boy's club, but reading this book, I was left with the feeling that female writers don't matter. Maybe we don't drink enough or misbehave in ways that make us interesting. It's hard to compete with Hunter S. Thompson (who can officially be laid to rest as the subject of bawdy tales - we've heard them all by now).
Still, if you love writing, look for this book.
This isn't a book about writing, per se, and it is certainly not a how-to, but there is much valuable advice hidden among the recollections and gossip. He understands how to craft a narrative and that comes through. There are many quotes - well-chosen and brief - that help to hammer home whatever theme he is exploring. The citations show how powerful a few select words can be.
If I have one complaint, it is that women are virtually absent from this book. I get that professional writing was (and in some sad ways, still is) a boy's club, but reading this book, I was left with the feeling that female writers don't matter. Maybe we don't drink enough or misbehave in ways that make us interesting. It's hard to compete with Hunter S. Thompson (who can officially be laid to rest as the subject of bawdy tales - we've heard them all by now).
Still, if you love writing, look for this book.
December 16, 2016
A wonderful book by a wonderful man. The stories are so colorful it's hard to believe they're true but they are. Terry is one of those great, larger than life characters that maybe the world won't see any more, the last of an amazing kind of guy.
March 18, 2018
Like any good book, Terry McDonell’s “The Accidental Life” kept me riveted from the get-go, laughing out loud, admiring occasional turns of prose, angered on his behalf and unwilling to turn to the last page.
I even cried at the end.
If that’s unusual behavior for a memoir – and a memoir about journalism, writing and editing, of all things – then McDonell’s is an unusual book. For one thing, it’s not written in the classic, clichéd “And then I …” succession of chapters. (Not that McDonell wouldn’t have had an excuse: the guy was the editor of Rolling Stone, Esquire, Us Weekly and Sports Illustrated, among others, and even blow-by-blow accounts of his adventures would have been quite entertaining.) Instead, McDonell wrote the book as a series of vignettes, some as short as a sidebar, others worthy of an SI bonus piece. He even offers word counts and “ENDIT”s.
For another, McDonell spends little time blowing his own horn. Oh, you can tell he’s proud of his work – proud of increasing profits and raising circulation, proud of succeeding at the weekly or monthly grind of the magazine business. But what he’s really proud of is giving writers an opportunity. Some are well-known figures he sought out, such as Thomas McGuane or George Plimpton; others are people he helps to elevate to new, and deserved, heights, such as Tim Cahill, who got the job of a lifetime when McDonell made him a go-to correspondent for Outside.
And he loves writers. McDonell is no slouch himself; his prose is diamond-hard, free of the kind of windiness that someone like (well) me would indulge in. (You can see he learned his wire-service lessons well.) But he often breaks to quote from one of the many people he edited or knew, passages that obviously have great emotional meaning to him. He quotes from Liz Tilberis, a fellow editor (she was at Harper’s Bazaar), when she was confronting her death. Or James Salter on his free-spirited days in London. Or Tom Wolfe on LSD.
I’m reminded of generations past, when people were taught to memorize poetry and could quote a verse when grasping for invention. (Witness Robert Kennedy when informing a crowd in Indianapolis that Martin Luther King Jr. had died.) It’s a sign of both knowledge and humility, of deep feeling. It’s also a vanishing talent, if “talent” is the right word. McDonell would probably gently offer a better one.
He offers capsule profiles of a number of figures, perhaps most notably McGuane, Plimpton, Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O’Rourke and Warren Hinckle. (Hinckle, who edited the seminal ‘60s journal Ramparts, gave Thompson his break as a gonzo journalist.) He’s fair to all, celebrating their strengths and lamenting their flaws. If he has some axes to grind, he’s remarkably dispassionate about them.
Late in the book, he has a chapter on SI’s Rick Reilly, who’d become the magazine’s star with his humor-filled back-page columns. Reilly had become smug about his fame – McDonell describes him as “a cocky teenager” – and when he finally left for ESPN, McDonell wrote an editor’s letter focusing on the future, not the past. Reilly was pissed and wrote McDonell a furious email that ended, “Screw you sideways.” McDonell says that Reilly was right in his fury. I don’t think I would have been so generous. But then again, Reilly had been getting on my nerves for years. (I will give him credit for one of the funniest jokes I ever read in any magazine, that “La Quinta is Spanish for ‘next door to Denny’s,’ ” but that doesn’t make up for years of overpraised casuals. Steve Rushin may have been too heavy on the puns, but I got the feeling the guy’s heart was genuine.)
None of this is to downplay McDonell’s own story, especially if – like me – you’re fascinated by an era when many editors were household names and Time Inc. offered generous expense accounts. He built Outside from nothing and was fearless about pursuing name writers, even if most of his readers wouldn’t recognize the names.
And when it all comes crashing down after the fat-and-happy ‘90s, McDonell gives the digital world his best shot but, to mix metaphors, he was tilting against a rising tide. “When we did talk about our journalism, the naïve thinking among most of the editors was that we just needed our resources back,” he writes. “We should have been thinking about content-management systems to deliver what we had.” It’s revealing that SI came up with a particularly good digital model, but couldn’t make it work in Apple’s iPad platform because Steve Jobs wanted the subscriber data, including credit card numbers. Jobs was thinking about his own model, of course – that’s why Facebook and Google are so powerful – but it ends up killing the eggs, if not the goose. Which is where we stand today.
I have to strain to find failings in “The Accidental Life.” I wish McDonell had offered more about HIS accidental life – the private side, that is. He’s apparently at least once-divorced and, given some anecdotes, unafraid of adventure, but there’s little internal probing. The book is about writing and writers, and for the most part he stays in that lane.
Still, there’s plenty of soul, even if you have to read between the lines to find it. And much to learn, especially in this age of soulless algorithms.
“When bad editors talk about mix, they mean formula: how much service, how much news, how much celebrity and, most recently perhaps, how many top ten lists of ways to serve kale,” McDonell writes. “They should think about eccentricity: what is the most surprising piece they can run without leaving readers scratching their heads, or alienated and angry.”
It’s no wonder I enjoyed Terry McDonell’s magazines, and it’s no wonder I loved his book. Thanks for the surprises, Terry.
I even cried at the end.
If that’s unusual behavior for a memoir – and a memoir about journalism, writing and editing, of all things – then McDonell’s is an unusual book. For one thing, it’s not written in the classic, clichéd “And then I …” succession of chapters. (Not that McDonell wouldn’t have had an excuse: the guy was the editor of Rolling Stone, Esquire, Us Weekly and Sports Illustrated, among others, and even blow-by-blow accounts of his adventures would have been quite entertaining.) Instead, McDonell wrote the book as a series of vignettes, some as short as a sidebar, others worthy of an SI bonus piece. He even offers word counts and “ENDIT”s.
For another, McDonell spends little time blowing his own horn. Oh, you can tell he’s proud of his work – proud of increasing profits and raising circulation, proud of succeeding at the weekly or monthly grind of the magazine business. But what he’s really proud of is giving writers an opportunity. Some are well-known figures he sought out, such as Thomas McGuane or George Plimpton; others are people he helps to elevate to new, and deserved, heights, such as Tim Cahill, who got the job of a lifetime when McDonell made him a go-to correspondent for Outside.
And he loves writers. McDonell is no slouch himself; his prose is diamond-hard, free of the kind of windiness that someone like (well) me would indulge in. (You can see he learned his wire-service lessons well.) But he often breaks to quote from one of the many people he edited or knew, passages that obviously have great emotional meaning to him. He quotes from Liz Tilberis, a fellow editor (she was at Harper’s Bazaar), when she was confronting her death. Or James Salter on his free-spirited days in London. Or Tom Wolfe on LSD.
I’m reminded of generations past, when people were taught to memorize poetry and could quote a verse when grasping for invention. (Witness Robert Kennedy when informing a crowd in Indianapolis that Martin Luther King Jr. had died.) It’s a sign of both knowledge and humility, of deep feeling. It’s also a vanishing talent, if “talent” is the right word. McDonell would probably gently offer a better one.
He offers capsule profiles of a number of figures, perhaps most notably McGuane, Plimpton, Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O’Rourke and Warren Hinckle. (Hinckle, who edited the seminal ‘60s journal Ramparts, gave Thompson his break as a gonzo journalist.) He’s fair to all, celebrating their strengths and lamenting their flaws. If he has some axes to grind, he’s remarkably dispassionate about them.
Late in the book, he has a chapter on SI’s Rick Reilly, who’d become the magazine’s star with his humor-filled back-page columns. Reilly had become smug about his fame – McDonell describes him as “a cocky teenager” – and when he finally left for ESPN, McDonell wrote an editor’s letter focusing on the future, not the past. Reilly was pissed and wrote McDonell a furious email that ended, “Screw you sideways.” McDonell says that Reilly was right in his fury. I don’t think I would have been so generous. But then again, Reilly had been getting on my nerves for years. (I will give him credit for one of the funniest jokes I ever read in any magazine, that “La Quinta is Spanish for ‘next door to Denny’s,’ ” but that doesn’t make up for years of overpraised casuals. Steve Rushin may have been too heavy on the puns, but I got the feeling the guy’s heart was genuine.)
None of this is to downplay McDonell’s own story, especially if – like me – you’re fascinated by an era when many editors were household names and Time Inc. offered generous expense accounts. He built Outside from nothing and was fearless about pursuing name writers, even if most of his readers wouldn’t recognize the names.
And when it all comes crashing down after the fat-and-happy ‘90s, McDonell gives the digital world his best shot but, to mix metaphors, he was tilting against a rising tide. “When we did talk about our journalism, the naïve thinking among most of the editors was that we just needed our resources back,” he writes. “We should have been thinking about content-management systems to deliver what we had.” It’s revealing that SI came up with a particularly good digital model, but couldn’t make it work in Apple’s iPad platform because Steve Jobs wanted the subscriber data, including credit card numbers. Jobs was thinking about his own model, of course – that’s why Facebook and Google are so powerful – but it ends up killing the eggs, if not the goose. Which is where we stand today.
I have to strain to find failings in “The Accidental Life.” I wish McDonell had offered more about HIS accidental life – the private side, that is. He’s apparently at least once-divorced and, given some anecdotes, unafraid of adventure, but there’s little internal probing. The book is about writing and writers, and for the most part he stays in that lane.
Still, there’s plenty of soul, even if you have to read between the lines to find it. And much to learn, especially in this age of soulless algorithms.
“When bad editors talk about mix, they mean formula: how much service, how much news, how much celebrity and, most recently perhaps, how many top ten lists of ways to serve kale,” McDonell writes. “They should think about eccentricity: what is the most surprising piece they can run without leaving readers scratching their heads, or alienated and angry.”
It’s no wonder I enjoyed Terry McDonell’s magazines, and it’s no wonder I loved his book. Thanks for the surprises, Terry.
December 27, 2018
I enjoyed learning more about the people, like Hunter S. Thompson and George Plimpton, but I agree with many others that it seemed women only existed to take care of the men or be divorced by the men. At one point he mentions the idea of "toxic masculinity" but then writes, "whatever THAT is." This book could have been titled Toxic Masculinity. Lol
March 11, 2018
Not many books are written magazine editors, who happened to have edited many of the inspiring writers of the era (1970-2012), Terry McDonnell has that distinction. His own writing is crisp and delightful (as are his raconteur skills).
The former top editor at Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated (among others) unspools his personal take on literary giants like Hunter S. Thompson, George Plimpton, and Tom McGuane with the kind of attitude of a guy telling you stories at bar a couple drinks in.
There’s wisdom about writing that accompanies reprinted passages from outstanding literary installments for magazines. It’s a shame we have essentially lost the impact of the magazine due to the Internet (and McDonnell bemoans in the latter stages of this engaging and thought-provoking work). As someone who found the longer pieces of new journalism in the non-news magazines some of the most important and fascinating elements of these magazines, I’m spurred to consider how to enter that space myself (it is cutthroat, but it’s a different kind of compelling storytelling) from the jaded enthusiasm that laces the each page of the book.
I found myself hunting down old articles that are mentioned throughout in order to get a better sense of McDonnell’s taste — which ruled the roost for multiple generations. His take on Richard Price and HST are worth the read alone.
The high degree of melancholy in these pages, because so many of McDonnell’s beacons of the language have passed on, while we’re richer all the more because their work is still available to us, there’s a sense of sadness that we’ll get no more of the specific voices that defined the age of the glossy magazine.
The former top editor at Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated (among others) unspools his personal take on literary giants like Hunter S. Thompson, George Plimpton, and Tom McGuane with the kind of attitude of a guy telling you stories at bar a couple drinks in.
There’s wisdom about writing that accompanies reprinted passages from outstanding literary installments for magazines. It’s a shame we have essentially lost the impact of the magazine due to the Internet (and McDonnell bemoans in the latter stages of this engaging and thought-provoking work). As someone who found the longer pieces of new journalism in the non-news magazines some of the most important and fascinating elements of these magazines, I’m spurred to consider how to enter that space myself (it is cutthroat, but it’s a different kind of compelling storytelling) from the jaded enthusiasm that laces the each page of the book.
I found myself hunting down old articles that are mentioned throughout in order to get a better sense of McDonnell’s taste — which ruled the roost for multiple generations. His take on Richard Price and HST are worth the read alone.
The high degree of melancholy in these pages, because so many of McDonnell’s beacons of the language have passed on, while we’re richer all the more because their work is still available to us, there’s a sense of sadness that we’ll get no more of the specific voices that defined the age of the glossy magazine.
August 29, 2017
I didn't read all of it but found myself reading more than I thought I would. I picked up this volume months before actually reading it. I was interested in the pieces recounting the names I know--Hunter Thompson, Jann Wenner, David Carr--and on the topics I'm interested in: gonzo, bibliomemoir, and word count. Each "note" is presented with its word count because McDonell liked to know, as an editor, what he was about to read.
His stories are interesting, told in blips that are a strong editor's word choice of what to include, what to leave out, and what to elude to. It was the time he took LSD and went golfing with HST and George Plimpton or when Steve Jobs basically told him to fuck off, those are the stories I went in for.
There are A LOT of other stories here about writers and magazines that I simply don't care for--the digital launch of Sports Illustrated and Bob Sherrill and a lot of magazine publishing faces and lingo that went in one ear and out the other. But as a magazine editing giant--of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, and HST--McDonell has a lot of good things to say about writing, writers, and editing.
I am in the process of editing my first manuscript and need to find some peace of mind about the craft and some distance from myself as a first reader reads it. There is so much work to be done and I wish I could just bang it out in one day. But I know that's impossible. Just trying to remind myself of the advice my graduate thesis advisor gave to me about taking work breaks: don't drink just when you're thirsty.
His stories are interesting, told in blips that are a strong editor's word choice of what to include, what to leave out, and what to elude to. It was the time he took LSD and went golfing with HST and George Plimpton or when Steve Jobs basically told him to fuck off, those are the stories I went in for.
There are A LOT of other stories here about writers and magazines that I simply don't care for--the digital launch of Sports Illustrated and Bob Sherrill and a lot of magazine publishing faces and lingo that went in one ear and out the other. But as a magazine editing giant--of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, and HST--McDonell has a lot of good things to say about writing, writers, and editing.
I am in the process of editing my first manuscript and need to find some peace of mind about the craft and some distance from myself as a first reader reads it. There is so much work to be done and I wish I could just bang it out in one day. But I know that's impossible. Just trying to remind myself of the advice my graduate thesis advisor gave to me about taking work breaks: don't drink just when you're thirsty.
February 27, 2023
Terry McDonell's memoir “An Accidental Life: An Editors notes on writers and writing” is exactly what it states. These are his reflections and it was pretty interesting. McDonell has edited some of the major magazines of our time including Esquire, Outside, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated. He had long friendships and professional relationships with many famous and notorious writers of the late twentieth century including George Plimpton, Jim Harrison, PJ O Rourke, Hunter Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Ford to name a few. Most of these writers are white men and it reflects to bias of the writing in these magazines as well as the people he hung out with in the 60s and 80s. It starts out as a memoir about “all my famous buddies” but McDonell is also honest about the mistakes he has made, the people he has hurt and the many lives that were shortened by substance abuse. Both Hunter and Plimpton were alcoholics who shortened their lives and hurt the people around them. But the book inevitably chronicles both the golden age of magazine writing and its complete collapse in the internet age. The clips he has about the quality of writing in SI by Frank DeFord and Rick Reilly stands in stark contrast to the swift collapse of it all. There is a great line in one of his chapters about SI. In talking about the desire to find transcendent themes in sports, after giving several luminous examples, he says simply “None of them were interested in writing for SI.com. There also some incites on the economic models of older magazine and how they did not hold up.
May 23, 2018
This started strong for me and then...it ended. It was powerful in some places, interesting in others with just a smattering of boring stuff and pervasive melancholy mixed up for flavor. In sum: Everyone great dies in the end. The internet is our savior and our undoing in so many ways.
The author’s career spans so many decades, too, that it’s hard to recognize relevance to some of the writers or celebrity figures he glorifies, but I think there is something sweet to the chronology of the overall piece. A fondness for simpler days, pen and ink, road trips and fat expense accounts—swimsuits with tops. It makes you wonder a bit how anyone got anything done back when they all sat in the sagebrush and did rails off Hunter Thompson’s pedestal on any given weekend. There certainly were some characters then, (and fewer now it seems). Maybe the soul of these genuine writers (who never claimed space on a blog) has gone the way of digital appliances too.
I’m glad to have read this piece, but I am also glad to be moving on from.
The author’s career spans so many decades, too, that it’s hard to recognize relevance to some of the writers or celebrity figures he glorifies, but I think there is something sweet to the chronology of the overall piece. A fondness for simpler days, pen and ink, road trips and fat expense accounts—swimsuits with tops. It makes you wonder a bit how anyone got anything done back when they all sat in the sagebrush and did rails off Hunter Thompson’s pedestal on any given weekend. There certainly were some characters then, (and fewer now it seems). Maybe the soul of these genuine writers (who never claimed space on a blog) has gone the way of digital appliances too.
I’m glad to have read this piece, but I am also glad to be moving on from.
August 2, 2017
If I could give this review a title it would be “Sausage Fest.” Included in the many, many essays in MCDonell’s book are only three about women. This book leads me to believe that there were nearly no female writers in the 1980s, ‘90s and early 2000s. Perhaps the author would say that he did not cross paths with that many, but why couldn’t he have sought them out for his magazines? Perhaps the author would say he was editing men’s magazines, but if men can write about women, why can women not write about men? In one essay he tells the story of the author Jim Harrison and his wonderful novel that really captured the female voice perfectly. He even included a review that said as much . . . written by a man. Wouldn’t a woman’s opinion on this subject have been more telling? I was disappointed at the lack of female representation, but the stories were very interesting. It was really a name-dropper of a book with a load of insider knowledge about male culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s. At least I wasn’t actually hit by a dose of Axe Body Spray every time I opened the book, only figuratively. I think this book has compelled me to only read books by female authors in 2018.
February 10, 2018
Terry McDonnell edited some of the most influential magazines published in America over the last 40 years. He crafted articles and themes at Rolling Stone, Esquire and Sports Illustrated and watched the world change as digital photography superseded Kodachrome and the internet and digital programming swallowed print magazines. During that time he hired and edited and mostly befriended some of the most famous writers of these times and he has great interesting stories to tell about all of them. Hunter Thompson, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, and James Salter are just some of my favorite writers that I found in this memoir of sorts. McDonnell writes well and clearly cares about great writing. A book of small chapters/vignettes I really enjoyed it.
September 8, 2020
I picked up this book from a communal bookshelf that sprang up in our building early in the pandemic, but it wasn't a random selection, as my friend and former Time Inc. colleague, Joelle, had spoken highly of it. This book became my Lafayette Park book, as it was the perfect accompaniment to late afternoon glasses of wine while sitting in one of the circles. I read several essays at a time, savoring it, over the course of pandemic summer.
As one who worked in the magazine business at Time Inc., this was such nostalgia, as well as just fantastic glimpses of the literary life, and of New York, which I still miss.
As one who worked in the magazine business at Time Inc., this was such nostalgia, as well as just fantastic glimpses of the literary life, and of New York, which I still miss.
February 14, 2018
I would have preferred more notes on editing and editors, but I can't fault McDonell (or the publisher) for writing a misleading title. Some exceptions apply (e.g., Thompson, Plimpton, O'Brien), but the majority of the book is a beautiful ode to writers I didn't know and magazines I'll never read. And the sheer number of both made it difficult to stay invested. I suspect folks who lived through this era would have a stronger connection with the material.
More books should include the word count with each chapter head, though.
More books should include the word count with each chapter head, though.
August 9, 2017
A number of great stories about characters who's names I recognize but who's works I'm not too familiar with. He has a number of great essays on a range of topics, some writing related and some more personal. Was surprised and how much I wanted to come back and keep reading and even going back and re-reading. Essay on editor at Cosmo and broader conversation about women running top level positions quite relevant to today's urgent struggles in this area.
May 9, 2018
I wanted to like this book, and it was great for what it was - a recollection of one man's career with many, many great writers. It was a much heavier read than I expected, with many of the stories shifting from entertaining narrative to journalism lecture. Overall, it was a solid read, and interesting for writers looking for more in-depth thought processes behind some of the great authors and journalists of the last century.
August 25, 2018
I can do no better than to quote my good buddy, Mark Stevens:
"Terry McDonell’s The Accidental Life: An Editor’s Notes on Writing and Writers is insightful, interesting, blunt, witty and packed with a selection from the A List of fiction and non-fiction writers from the last handful of decades.
Scan the contents, there you go, and you’ll get an idea of the wordsmiths McDonell edited during a colorful career."
Enough said.
"Terry McDonell’s The Accidental Life: An Editor’s Notes on Writing and Writers is insightful, interesting, blunt, witty and packed with a selection from the A List of fiction and non-fiction writers from the last handful of decades.
Scan the contents, there you go, and you’ll get an idea of the wordsmiths McDonell edited during a colorful career."
Enough said.
November 14, 2022
A lively account of a career spent writing, editing magazines, and socializing with some of the top writers of the mid 20th century. Hunter S. Thompson was an especially close friend, as were George Plimpton and Jann Wenner, along with a host of others too numerous to list. The book is a nostalgic romp from the Vietnam War years through the arrival of digital media, studded with a who's who of the glitteraty. A fun read, and an education on what it is that magazine editors actually do.
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