Reviews

“Terry McDonell knew the wildest writers, edited most of them, and he remembers. A great read.”

—Roy Blount, Jr.

“In this memoir, some of the most colorful literary titans to ever walk this earth indeed live up to their legends. But the gold in McDonell’s book is the lessons he took from these writers, beyond the bravado and antics that often characterized their work, about how to perceive the world.”

—Nate Hopper,
TIME

“A glorious book, an affectionate and knowing tour of contemporary literature and journalism, full of essential insight into editing, writing, and living on one’s own terms.”

—Steve Coll,
Dean, Columbia School of Journalism

  • “Intelligent, entertaining, and chivalrous . . . McDonell, founding editor of Outside magazine in 1977, has had tenures at or near the top of Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Esquire and Sports Illustrated. Slashing costs and watching serious writers take buyouts felt [to him] ‘like a great library was burning down.’ But The Accidental Life is a fond book. It’s a fan’s notes from a man who, before the apocalypse, edited and often befriended many of his literary heroes . . . He played touch football and ate oysters with James Salter; golfed while on LSD with Hunter S. Thompson and George Plimpton; canoed and drank with Peter Matthiessen; and helped explode an uptight dinner party alongside Edward Abbey . . . McDonell’s insistence on keeping the focus on his writers rather than himself has a humble appeal—this memoir is far from self-congratulatory. He writes winningly about his regrets [and] evokes the magazine-world heyday of lavish offices, drinks carts in the evening and expense-account hedonism. Some of the details will make freelance writers scream. (I screamed, and I rarely write freelance any longer.) The Accidental Life is a savvy fax from a dean of the old school.”

    — Dwight Garner, The New York Times

  • “In his long career as an editor, McDonell has worked with eminent, colorful writers. His new memoir is full of fond anecdotes about literary friends, and more. He also provides a kind of primer for aspiring editors.”

    — John Williams, The New York Times Book Review

  • “McDonell’s career in American magazines involved friendships and collaborations with some of the foremost cultural figures of postwar America, from novelist Richard Ford to actress Margot Kidder. The number of magazines at which he served in the past four decades is astonishing, and [in The Accidental Life], he runs his fingers along the fine grains of the editing life. McDonell [did] pretty much everything one could have hoped to in the magazine world of late 20th-century America. He edited and befriended the alpha males of a muscular brand of journalism that flowed from the American West to midtown Manhattan. He was also chummy with Helen Gurley Brown, the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan, who took the bus down Central Park West to her office, in order to stay in touch with her readers. He hung out with the crime novelist Richard Price, rafted down the Salmon River in Idaho with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, and frequented the literary clubhouse that was Elaine’s restaurant on the Upper East Side. Seemingly every writer floats through these pages: Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, Susan Orlean and, most surprisingly of all, Jimmy Buffett, who wrote for McDonell at Outside and Sports Illustrated, composing a song for the latter’s swimsuit issue . . . McDonell acknowledges mistakes, as well as the shortcomings of the magazine industry: he also points out that few women are the top editors; people of color remain all too rare on the mastheads. [But] McDonell displays an optimism rare for his industry. ‘Editors,’ he writes, ‘have to be optimistic, ever hopeful that the next issue will come together not quite as badly as the last one.’”

    — Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek

  • “Eloquent. . . . direct and crisp, with a touch of tartness. McDonell [is] as fine a magazine editor as I have known. By his count, he has worked at 13 magazines, most of them as top editor, and he shrewdly organizes his book as a collection of vignettes, each one with its word count noted at the top, since when he edited stories he liked to know how long his pencil had to travel. Extraordinary moments [are] laid out nimbly in his memoir. At magazines like Outside, Rolling Stone and Esquire, he could persuade novelists to commit journalism, usually at length, and sometimes with the journey and not the destination as the point . . . He has all the stories, and tells them with a subtle tension, never succumbing to the easy laugh. McDonell can be sentimental, especially about friends now dead, but he is never mawkish. There is not a bloated or sappy passage in the book.”

    —Jim Kelly, The Wall Street Journal

  • “Revelatory, poignant . . . instructional. The Accidental Life is one man’s manly writer stories; a writing guide—a young (or old) writer could learn a lot from the advice McDonell has gleaned [and] from his own crisp, thoughtful sentences; a eulogy for the magazine business of yore; and an engaging, soulful tribute to stories of all kinds and the quirky, complicated people who craft them. ‘There is nothing finer than deciding to write,’ McDonell begins [his book]. Anyone who agrees with that sentiment will want to read everything that follows.”

    — Michael Merschel, The Dallas Morning News

  • “Informative, inspiring, often surprising; rich in anecdotes . . . McDonell made the masthead at major publications, shaping his own stories and those of other writers from the 1970s through the early years of this century . . . By the lesson of his own style—his tight, flowing sentences—he shows how to put words on paper. It’s with author profiles that McDonell’s book acquires value: an essay on Elaine’s may amuse would-be diners who couldn’t get a table when Frank Sinatra could. Other profiles are more contemporary, including insightful takes on novelists Richard Price and Richard Ford and a painful recollection of troubled media guru David Carr. Observations on money, writer’s block and letters to the editor: editing success is all in the mix, and the mix McDonell achieves is just so. He holds off until the end of his book to explain its title. Redemption in work, he reflects, kept life steady against the accidental when ‘friends faded. Life failed.’ McDonell’s best pieces capture the accidental when they take unexpected turns that lend his writing insight and humanity.”

    —Gerald Bartell, San Francisco Chronicle

  • “An insider’s view of the magazine industry, from its apex in the ’70s to the rise of the Internet and online content and decline of print journalism—by a man who was present to witness these titanic shifts. McDonell offers stories of luminaries of various stripes, including George Plimpton, Hunter S. Thompson, Steve Jobs, a cigar-smoking and mostly silent Arnold Schwarznegger, and Margot Kidder . . . As with many editors, McDonell effaces a large part of himself in [the book]; his invisibility allows these writers, subjects, friends, and bosses to shine more brightly. He offers nuance and depth.”

    — Erin Gianni, PopMatters

  • “It reads like A Moveable Feast for the second half of the twentieth century, unfolding from L.A. to Manhattan, Montana to Aspen. All the bad boys are at large: Hunter, McGuane, Buffett, Jann, Plimpton. Yes, a lot of ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ went down. But McDonell always brings it back to the writers and the writing—which, by the way, he does as well as any of them.”

    — John Huey, former Editor in Chief, Time Inc.

  • “Legendary editor McDonell has lately found himself in the digital realm, having cofounded LitHub, but he’s served as editor at over a dozen magazines. His memoir is advertised on the strength of its wild side, but it is most attractive for its hard-earned wisdom on the art of storytelling.”

    — Michael LaPointe, Times Literary Supplement

  • “In a series of sharp vignettes, McDonell takes readers behind the scenes of the publishing world to reveal the humorous and at times difficult relationships between writers and their editors.”

    — Poets & Writers

  • “Fascinating. . . . Equal parts memoir and manual, McDonell embeds advice and insight within the absorbing anecdotes that have punctuated his career. His recollections—broken into succinct, themed essays—provide a window into the lives of the writers he has edited. Best of all for us writers reading along, these looks behind the scenes are sewn together with reflections on topics as wide-ranging as his formula for a foolproof feature pitch and his experience building the first tablet magazine at Sports Illustrated.”

    —Tyler Moss, Writer’s Digest

This is the perfect example of blending showstoppers with perceptive appreciations of the work of McDonell’s favorite writers, and fascinating snippets on the craft of editing. Expect this book to find a home on the desks of just about everyone who has anything to do with magazine publishing (or who likes to read about hanging out at Elaine’s with famous writers).”

—Bill Ott, Booklist

“As a former top-of-the-masthead editor at Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated, McDonell has been there and done that over four decades of dramatic change in the magazine business. Along the way, he’s edited and drunk with a who’s who of American writers. Naturally, he has stories to tell, and he tells plenty of them in this unfailingly fascinating look at that point where publishing, literature, and celebrity meet . . .