(2 of 3)
Felker is, above all, according to one longtime staffer, "a collector and a climber. If you're not important or have nothing interesting to say, Clay won't remember you, even if he's met you 20 times." Milton Glaser, the gifted designer who is responsible for New York's hip, hyped visual package, concedes that his longtime friend Felker is "very abrasive, very argumentative," but insists that "the chemistry works. It's all a great mystery." Bestselling Author Gail Sheehy (Passages), Felker's steady companion, considers him a fascinating talker but adds, "He's the most impatient man I've ever known. He's incapable of spending ten minutes at the typewriter." Sheeny adds that Felker is "almost worshipful" of good writers.
Felker is an idea editor, not a pencil editor. He has had remarkably accurate antennae for coming fashions —and a knack for catchy headlines that are often better than the articles and make each fad seem momentous. The list of writers for whom he has provided a springboard is also impressive. As features editor of Esquire from 1957 to 1962, he helped steer Norman Mailer into reportage and published some of the first so-called New Jourrialists, most notably Tom Wolfe. On the old New York Herald Tribune, where he edited the Sunday magazine that was to be reincarnated as New York, he gave free rein to such emerging stars as Jimmy Breslin, Dick Schaap, George ("Adam Smith") Goodman. Many of the best and the brightest have left in rage and frustration—or on the wave of New York-borne success. Felker, says Ms. editor and Felker protégée Gloria Steinem, is "the lightning rod of animosity—and of creativity."
Felker does not add to his credibility by listing his birth date in Who's Who as Oct. 2, 1928, when he was actually born on Oct. 2, 1925. As adamantly as Harry S. Truman, he has refused to disclose his middle name—possibly because Schuette rhymes with "snooty" in Missouri honk. His father, Carl Felker, now 82, was a veteran newsman who became the editor of the immensely successful Sporting News (circ. 330,000). Carl Felker never won a single share of stock in Sporting News, a failure that still weighs on Clay's mind. When Clay was eight, he started his own hectograph-printed newspaper (ads: 25¢ a shot). Soon after he graduated from Duke, he got a job at LIFE.
Some New York staffers—who are not generally overpaid—have loudly objected to Felker's costly personal and professional style. When the magazine moved in 1974 to expensive new quarters on Manhattan's Second Avenue, the boss installed a gym. He also carved out a staff dining room (he had it redecorated several times) and installed a $25,000-a-year chef, who signed each day's menus "Felipe—Executive Chef."