How does one interview their boss and friend of 47 years? Very carefully, unless your boss is Graydon Carter, whose gift for irreverence and self-deprecation is almost as legendary as his hair. His new memoir, When the Going Was Good (written with guidance from the wonderful James Fox), chronicles his life so far, which includes stints as co-creator of Spy magazine and, for a quarter of a century, as editor of Vanity Fair. He is quite the stickler for detail, always at the ready with a Blackwing editor’s pencil, but let the record show he changed none of these questions!
JIM KELLY: You grew up in Canada, and your account of your early years is by turns hilarious (realizing that one reason you quit playing hockey at 13 was that “whatever I was going to be doing in life, a complete set of teeth would be part of what I needed to get ahead”) and a bit scary (climbing telephone poles working as a lineman for the Canadian National Railway in Saskatchewan one summer). How do you think your Canadian upbringing shaped you?
