Graydon never told us he once slept in a boxcar. Long before he co-founded Spy magazine, became the arbiter of wit and glamour as the editor of Vanity Fair, and went on to create our digital weekly, Air Mail, Graydon worked for an extended summer stint as a railroad lineman in his native Canada. The experience didn’t manifestly improve mass transportation in Saskatchewan, but it turned out to be invaluable training for humoring the temperamental and talented writers, artists, movie stars, and moguls that have brightened every publication he has led. If you can befriend railroad men with criminal records, honestly earned muscles, and mustaches, you can handle the C-suites of Condé Nast, Wall Street, and Hollywood.
And it’s the incongruous collection of friends and colleagues that Graydon made and kept along the way that stands out in his disarming and very funny memoir, When the Going Was Good. Many are well known—movie stars, publishers, aristocrats, artists, novelists—and just as many are old friends and colleagues whom the public doesn’t know but who have stayed close for decades. You won’t be able to check to see if you made the cut until the official publication date of March 25, 2025, but it is already available for pre-order. If you like Air Mail, this might be the book for you. —Alessandra Stanley
Alessandra Stanley is a Co-Editor at AIR MAIL
