Edsel Read Free Page A

those pictures of Marion Davies.”
    His expression was uncomprehending. The name meant nothing to him. I was beginning to wonder how young he was.
    “Anyway, your familiarity with this area is important. I’d expect you to know all the best photo opportunities.”
    I lifted my eyebrows, making an eager sponge of my face. I’d never heard the term before.
    “Have you seen our magazine?” he asked.
    “No. I didn’t know you’d published.”
    “We sent out a trial run of six thousand copies.” He lifted the flap of a tan leather briefcase with a sling handle that reminded me too much of a ladies’ shoulder bag and withdrew a slick rectangle the size of a placemat, laying it on my side of the table.
    The cover was glossy, saddle-stapled, and consisted entirely of a black-and-white photo of Ava Gardner, who seemed to be having difficulty keeping both straps on her shoulders. It was the tightest, largest close-up I’d ever seen. Her lips were the size of brass knuckles; you could have inserted a quarter in either one of her nostrils. The only printing, aside from the month and year and the twenty-five-cent price, was the magazine’s title, PIX!, in letters two inches high, each one a different primary color.
    “I thought it was a local publication. What’s Ava Gardner got to do with the Great Lakes?”
    “My partner wanted to run a picture of Tahquamenon Falls, but I vetoed it. What is journalism’s first responsibility, Mr. Minor?”
    “To make money.”
    He beamed, the proud tutor. “Natural wonders don’t sell magazines.”
    “ The National Geographic will be sorry to hear it.” I turned the slippery pages. The first several were full-page advertisements, Dyna-Flo transmissions and halitosis and Ronald Reagan sucking on a Camel. “National accounts?”
    “Actually, we lifted them out of other publications. It makes a better impression and we’re hoping they’ll be grateful for the free ride. The real stuff’s in back.”
    I skipped over. Four pages cut into quarters. Milo’s Auto Repair, the Elite Clothiers, a coupon for a free shampoo and set at Dixie’s Beauty Academy. It looked like the back of a high school yearbook.
    “We expect to publish at a loss the first two years,” Hall said. “We’ve got enough backing for the first year. By then we should have the circulation numbers to attract the big accounts. That’s why we need talent.”
    “There’s not much text.” The bulk of the magazine was devoted to pictures of boats on Lake Huron, a baton-twirling contest in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a two-page spread on the Ford River Rouge plant, a row of cigar-shaped houses under construction in Toledo. The accompanying “articles” ran no longer than a paragraph, isolated in sixteen-point Plantin in the middle of fields of white space a child could draw on.
    “The written word can’t hope to compete with television. At one time the human brain was thought capable of taking in only twenty-four pictures per second, the pace of the so-called motion picture. We know now that it can consume more than a hundred. Experiments are being conducted to determine how many more it can gobble up without even being aware of it. Meanwhile its capacity for taking in words has remained a stolid ten. How can Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address aspire to create as strong an impression as Uncle Miltie in an evening gown?”
    I lowered Pix! ’s cover carefully, like a coffin lid. “When I was ten years-old I entered a hot dog eating contest at the state fair. I swallowed eleven dogs in ten minutes. I threw up the whole batch in less than five. Taking in isn’t retaining.”
    “All we ask is that they remember the name of the magazine from week to week. It’s a killer schedule and chews up talent. How are you on deadlines, Mr. Minor?”
    “I haven’t missed one since nineteen twenty-eight, when Dusty Steinhauser kidnapped me and kept me playing poker behind the Polar Bear Cafe until he won back what he owed