Editors Letter

Fifth Column

We have something to celebrate this month. Vanity Fair is five years old. Not much to brag about, you may think, but it feels like glorious middle age to the midwives at the brawling birth. , ^

The magazine you see today has grown from various waves of creative energy. The launch editor, Richard Locke, declared high standards with the ambitious publication in March 1983 of the entire Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Garcia Marquez, as it happens, is in this issue, too (page 124). Locke brought in Boston Phoenix critic Stephen Schiff (whose essay on the movie of Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being is on page 40). But it is to Locke's successor, Leo Lerman, that we owe the editorial inspiration for appointing writers James Wolcott and Bob Colacello, and for such enterprising journalism as Francine du Plessix Gray's powerful, prizewinning report on Klaus Barbie and the conscience of France.

Any magazine that is truly alive is a work in progress. In the last few years Vanity Fair has continued to evolve, quickening its journalistic impulses while nourishing a sense of fun. What has stabilized is the team that produces it; we are gifted with an extraordinary group of editors who plan, push, polish, and produce. They're the assets who rarely go home at five o'clock, and I have a lot to thank them for.

Among all the ink that has gone down, some pieces that made the difference were: the Reagans dancing on the cover, kissing on the inside, and waltzing off the newsstand; Gregor von Rezzori retracing the lubricious drive of Humbert Humbert across motel America; Alex Shoumatoff investigating the African death of primatologist Dian Fossey; Dominick Dunne dis-

secting Claus von Billow, who posed in black leather for photographer Helmut Newton; Barbara Goldsmith unraveling the psychodrama behind the Johnson & Johnson will contest; John Richardson analyzing the Picasso sketchbooks; Marie Brenner probing the legend of Clare Boothe Luce (on page 158); the Countess of Romanones remembering the last years of the Duchess of Windsor; Michael Shnayerson documenting the decimation of the arts by the AIDS epidemic; Ron Rosenbaum going heart-to-heart with Dennis Hopper; Jesse Kombluth appealing for justice in the case of Courtney Steel, victim of a drunk driver; Gail Sheehy penetrating the character malaise of Gary Hart; and Annie Leibovitz capturing the electric energy of Liza Minnelli, and the ageless glitz of this month's cover girls.

The birthday party starts here.

Editor in chief