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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

example, on this 1946 effort. Luce tried to--this is again from Loudon Wainwright's book, The Great American Magazine. To re-establish “a philosophical unity for LIFE”--I don't know if you recall that phrase--and he sent to you, Billings, Larsen, Longwell and Alan Grover[?] a memo about LIFE. It had a lot of headings--it was, I think, 14 pages. “The Basic Point” was one heading; “Basic Ingredients”; “Specific Remodeling Priority.” And some of the principal points he made were: 1. LIFE has to have the best pictures. 2. LIFE has to have a certain number of great pictures. “Too many of our serious pieces are not really first-class,” he wrote under another heading. And he said: “We have room for only one or two serious efforts per week.” And he said he was very clear about what he wanted for the major written article each week. “As for the big text piece”, he wrote, “hereafter it would never be a profile of anyone except a very important figure unless it is absolutely a knockout piece of writing. And the big text piece will not be a profile even of a very important figure more than 50% of the time. That it, the big text piece would cover the whole range of possible prose subjects and maybe poetry, too. What we want for this text piece is terribly high standards of important and literary brilliance.”

Heiskell:

You see--it's meaningless! [laughter] It's absolutely meaningless!

Q:

Do you remember a similar--





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