Until recently I haven't been much of a Kindle reader, but when travelling I have realised an e-reader is a way to indulge my greedy desire to have a vast choice of reading matter without paying extra for luggage or having to deal with heavy cases as I advance in years. And thus, while travelling recently I bought, in a fit of parsimonious jetlag, The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown for 99p.
It was, on the face of it, an odd choice, as I don't read Vanity Fair and my vague impression of Tina Brown was the disgustingly English one that she might be a bit 'pushy' - the 'pushy' label is such a brilliant curb to hold back people who might dream of success. Where does it come from, I wonder? Why, if people have drive, is it considered rather sickening in many English circles for them to openly pursue their ambitions?
I don't know, but one thing is certain - somehow, Tina Brown, although not from the New World, seems to have been oblivious to the notion that she should restrain her work ethic and behave with unpushy decorum. As a result, while still in her thirties she soared across the firmament of magazine publishing, a blazing comet of courage and positivity. While all the way through her diaries I kept wondering whether the goal of producing a glossy magazine was worthy of the ingenuity and constant work she lavished on the task, I nevertheless found the book absolutely riveting. Brown's diaries give a fascinating insight into a particular era and also into what the journey she took as a young English woman in a very competitive field of enterprise in one of the most competitive cities on earth, (New York), was like.
When the book begins, Tina is feeling restless. She is still only in her twenties, but she has already been editing Tatler for some time and she is eager for a greater challenge. When offered the editorship of a failing magazine called Vanity Fair, she grabs the opportunity and hurtles off to live in New York, despite the fact the prospect of the move frightens her quite a lot, particularly as she is leaving her husband behind in London.
What follows is a several stranded story. There is the tale of how she very brilliantly manages to turn Vanity Fair into an enormous financial success, which, at least in her telling, is in large part due to her intense attention to detail, her alertness to the zeitgeist and her ability to spot really good writers and manage them well - plus her obsession with cover photographs, which you slowly realise as the book goes on are among the most important factors influencing magazine sales.
As well as this purely strategic business story, there is the equally intriguing account of how Brown learns to make her way in the higher echelons of New York society (as well as, to a lesser extent, in Hollywood circles), gaining confidence and achieving an increasing understanding of the way the people she moves amongst think. In this context, her comments about America, most especially New York, versus Great Britain are fascinating. On the one hand, she feels that "the work ethic and energy" in New York "hold you up with invisible hands and make you buoyant when you get out of bed"; on the other, she recognises "how terrifyingly tough NYC is, what an hourly battering it is to stay on top". In America, she says, ''everyone comes at you with such velocity". One reason I found these observations especially interesting is that I think they help one to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump. Even though he is no longer young, there is an energy to him that is purely American - and there is also a refreshing energy in the rising generation he has gathered around him. It is an energy that I think people in the old world lack, perhaps inevitably.
Above and beyond these two strands, the business one and the portrait of America, the diaries tell the story of a woman who tries to "have it all". Brown describes with considerable honesty the difficulties of loving your work and your children and trying to keep hold of both without damaging either. She more or less pulls it off, but the struggle involves enormous strain. My heart went out to her as I read. For all our notions of progress, we have not even begun to resolve the dilemma of how brilliant, driven women can have careers and provide the love and attention they feel their children need. Even using the adjective "driven" to describe Brown seems to me to risk casting her in a negative light. Instinctively, many people find ambition in women, particularly women with children, unattractive, even if they don't admit they do. While this visceral reaction might have evolutionary advantages, it makes life difficult for those who are born driven - and it also makes things difficult in the world we now live in, where, to have any chance of owning a place to live, both members of a couple need to work full-time.
In the interstices of the book's three main stories are all sorts of vignettes - Marlon Brando stringing along Brown's husband, (who wants a book out of him), with hours of time in a swimming pool and sauna late in the night, during which Brando recites speech after speech from Antony and Cleopatra entirely from memory; Mick Jagger being hilarious on his motivation for having so many girlfriends; a marvellous scene where Tina and the Kissingers lie on the Kissingers' huge orthopaedic bed watching the start of the Iraq war unfold on television; the revelation that Brown finds Joan Didion rather dull company; glimpses of Robert Hughes while he is writing that work of genius, The Fatal Shore; brushes with Anna Wintour; and on and on.
Strangely, although Brown can see the absurdity of individual situations such as that she describes with the Kissingers, she displays no trace of a larger sense of the silliness of human life. And I realised that this was a huge advantage. To never stop and think, "Is an idiotic magazine really worth draining myself for?" was essential if she was to be successful. If you are unable to take success seriously, you will get nowhere. To be a big shot you need to have faith not only in yourself but in your goal. You can never let yourself glimpse the possibility that what you are scrambling toward may not be worth it - and, luckily for her, that appears not to have been an idea that ever entered Tina Brown's mind.
By the end of the book I admired Brown for her hard work, her drive and her genuine brilliance in the role she chose for herself. However, there is one thing I have been wondering since I finished reading her Vanity Fair diaries and that is: how is Brown today? Most of us moving into our sixties are aware of having little time left in which to achieve the goals we've always had in the back of our minds - or possibly we've come to the realisation that we won't achieve them. What is it like to have met all your targets in your forties? What do you do with the rest of your life?
Perhaps Brown will release some more diaries and then I will be able to find out.
