The Sunday Stories
Feud: SI E2 "Graydon and Me"
George Clooney appeared bare-chested on the cover of the October 2003 issue, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. It was a good cover. Possibly a distracting one. But like I mentioned in Episode 1 of Graydon and Me the real drama in that issue wasn’t Clooney. It was buried on page 84, in “Letters to the Editor.” Two letters. One by Hamilton South. And the other by me.
“Give Graydon my number!” I screamed into the phone.
Hamilton was on the other end. He was close to Graydon and very well respected in the magazine and fashion world, having worked with my late mother-in-law, Lee, at Giorgio Armani before joining Vanity Fair as a senior editor. He was also my late husband Anthony’s closest friend and close with both Carolyn and John.
I think I’ve made my point: Hamilton was family.
Not only was Hamilton family, but he had also written a Letter to the Editor. Which is why the irony that he was the one who was tasked to relay Graydon’s crash-out was peak absurdity.
Apparently Graydon could accept Hamilton’s criticism; mine, evidently, was too brutal to bear. I needed to be reprimanded. How dare I defend my friend. I began to suspect the Begin the Beguine incident a few months back had wounded his ego far more than any of us had realized.
My phone rang again. Assuming it was Graydon, I answered with my full chest. I couldn’t wait to tell him what I thought of the book excerpt. But it wasn’t Graydon. In typical fashion for the time, he had sent a woman to do his bidding.
Evgenia Peretz. She wasn’t just any editor—she was the daughter of Marty Peretz, a famous, if controversial, political editor himself. I felt for her. She had been charged with doing Graydon’s dirty work.
“Graydon has asked that you edit your letter to three hundred words,” she said. “The magazine has never published a Letter to the Editor longer than that.”
My letter was twelve hundred words—each one chosen to inflict maximum pain, each sentence verified by independent sources. I had receipts long before that word meant what it does now.
“Graydon is asking me to cut three out of every four words?” I said, knowing the phrasing would piss him off.