“IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE”

"I think (the decline of Playboy) is more than just a reflection of free pornography on the Internet, I think this is a reflection of a problem in our culture.``We're becoming more of a computer-oriented culture. People don't read as much anymore. Sophisticated kinds of media of all kinds are suffering. Playboy is part of that." In a recent interview with Esquire Gore Vidal, a long-time contributor to both Playboy and Esquire, explained that he doesn't write anymore "because everybody he used to write to impress is dead, other writers included."So where does that leave people like me? I am 25, and part of a generation that is characterized by the rise of the neo-cons. For which hard-core pornography became an uncensored commodity online; for which the old lad magazines were replaced by sexually explicit raunchy rags, devoid of journalistic aspirations. A generation that has no Gore Vidal, no Norman Mailer or Gay Talese.

Toronto Star
Jan 4 2009