Harold Hayes
American magazine editor; the legendary editor of Esquire from 1963 to 1973 who shaped the magazine into the principal vehicle of the New Journalism. Hayes approved Mailer's eight-installment An American Dream serial (January-August 1964, 64.2-64.9), the November 1964 'In the Red Light' Republican Convention coverage (64.20), the long-running Big Bite column (1962-1963), 'Some Children of the Goddess' (1963), 'Superman Comes to the Supermarket' (1960), and 'An Evening with Jackie Kennedy' (1962). Hayes edited Smiling through the Apocalypse: Esquire's History of the Sixties (McCall, 1970), which reprints 'Superman' (60.9).
Harold Hayes became managing editor of Esquire in 1961 and editor in 1963, holding the post until 1973. Under Hayes, Esquire became the principal magazine vehicle of what would come to be called the New Journalism: Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Joan Didion, Garry Wills, John Sack, Michael Herr, and — most prolifically and most centrally — Norman Mailer.
The Mailer–Hayes / Mailer–Esquire relationship is structural and decade-spanning. Per the AAD Expanded Timeline (Lucas et al., Spring 2019, working from Lennon’s 2004 Sligo Press collected letters), in late summer 1963, “NM proposes and Esquire editor Harold Hayes agrees to the serial publication of [An American Dream] in the magazine, January through August 1964.” That decision yields the eight-installment AAD serial (64.2–64.9). Hayes also approved “In the Red Light” (64.20, November 1964), “Some Children of the Goddess” (63.8, July 1963), the 14-installment Big Bite column (62.18 through 63.13, November 1962–December 1963), “An Evening with Jackie Kennedy” (62.12, July 1962), “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” (60.9, November 1960), and most subsequent Mailer pieces in the magazine through the late 1960s.
In 1970 Hayes edited the Esquire anthology Smiling through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties (New York: McCall), which reprints “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.” See media/images/covers/1970-smiling-through-the-apocalypse.jpg for the cover (already in CREDITS from the 1960 ingest).
Stub; to be expanded as the Mailer–Hayes relationship is documented across later years.
Related pages
- 1964 | Esquire | An American Dream: A New Novel Serialized Exclusively in Esquire by Norman Mailer; Installment One: The Harbors of the Moon | In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention in 1964 | Superman Comes to the Supermarket
- Installment VIII: At the Lion and the Serpent (64.9) | Some Children of the Goddess: Further Evaluations of the Talent in the Room (63.8) | The "Big Bite" (62.18) | The "Big Bite" (63.13) | An Evening with Jackie Kennedy: Being an Essay in Three Acts (62.12)