The write stuff

Michael Jackson reached for literary stardom…but was nudity artistically justified?

So many respected authors have written for Playboy that ambitious scriveners regard an assignment there as a recognition of a certain status. Like a kid imagining his name in a Cup Final team, I used to look at the mug shots on the Playbill page and fancy my chances.

I had the Write Stuff: the unruly ‘Kurt Vonnegut’ hair; the designer spectacles, through which I was frequently photographed scrutinizing a brew (‘beer glasses,’ a friend called them); the droopy moustache, conveying the appropriate world weariness; the welltravelled jean-jacket, its pockets stretched with interview tapes or rolls of Kodachrome. All I needed was to be sharply cropped by the art director.

Back then; the magazine was published in Chicago. Through Democrat friends, I had been invited to a party to honour the city’s first black Mayor. The Bears were there, the A-Team and Dick Gregory. I ran into a friend who had worked in Paris for Lui and Oui, the latter a junior partner of Playboy. I had written a few pieces for Oui, including a consumer’s guide to sex in Amsterdam.

My friend introduced me to a senior editor from Playboy.

“Beer?” the editor mused. “What would you say about it?” People have been asking me this for decades. “Beer is about to be chic,” I assured him. “Beer Chic!” he whooped. “That’s a headline!” When the contract arrived, the assignment was to write a story called Beer Chic. The headline might have been tentatively justified in San Francisco, Portland (Oregon) and Seattle. The fir.....

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By Michael Jackson

Section : The Beer Hunter

Page number : 7