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Authors: Hugh M. Hefner
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an antlered buck swilling a cocktail, which would have been most unfortunate. More fortunately a magazine called Stag sent him a cease-and-desist order (no antlers allowed), and then he reconsidered and found his rabbit, the ever thumping, ever procreating playboy of the animal kingdom. What would come of it, besides the bestselling men’s magazine in the history of the world, in no particular order: nightclubs and hotels and casinos and resorts and women dressed as bunnies and women dressed not at all andvarious publications and a book imprint and merchandise bearing rabbit heads and television programs and movie productions and cable channels and video marketing and a record label and video games and a humming Website and Mansions, but certainly, and most important of all, good life, always good life, no matter what.
And so he also said: “Society may urge you to live your life for somebody else. But enlightened self-interest is for the good of everybody. If you don’t care about yourself, you’re going to find it difficult to care for other people. H. L. Mencken was the one who said: ‘A puritan is somebody who is very upset because someone, somewhere, is having a good time.’”
T he Wisdom of the White Lie
I had two different letterheads—one for Stag Party and the other for my imaginary distributing company called Nationwide News Company. When I wrote a letter on the magazine’s stationery, I was the editor, publisher, or promotion, advertising, or circulation director as circumstances dictated. When I was writing to newsdealers, I was the general manager or president of Nationwide News Company. I was the entire staff of both. That’s all there was—just me, my typewriter, and that card table.
“I wanted a job that I could love,” he said. So he created one for himself, one that nobody else could ever have. He had no dough, no real experience at what he would need to do. He just let his head rumble, when he wasn’t knocking it against walls: “Sometimes I would find myself in a crowded elevator or a building lobby, and I would be overwhelmed and demoralized by the notion that I was the only one who was still unplugged and disconnected.” He would not be the first or the last one to feel such demoralization. And yet he had nothing to lose by sticking his long neck out. So he did.
I f You Don’t Reach for the Sky, You’ll Never Leave the Ground Floor
You have to calculate the odds before taking risks. But if you don’t take chances on the things you really want, then you’ll never know. Rational risk is part of what life is all about. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?
As a boy, he let a girl turn him inside out. As a man, he turned himself inside out. Girls, this time, would come later. “When you talk about self-reinvention,” he said, “the extent to which I have done it and chronicled it—done it at a conscious level—is probably the most unique and remarkable thing about my life.” He decided he was not the guy living the life he was living—married, working for people he did not want to work for, bottled up, lost as lost gets—and incited a personal rebellion. He reinvented himself, and soon enough he got the girl and the girl and the girl and the girl, et cetera.
Did we say that he got the girl?
Et cetera.
T he Importance of Self-Reinvention
I’m a dreamer, a crusader who wanted to change the world. There are so many things in life that force you into a box and force you to conform to values handed down by others. When you are very young, both society and family define you. There should be a time when you begin to define yourself for yourself.
----
Hef’s Five Lucky Breaks
When a fellow knows that he is up to something, he might well write himself an annual letter explaining exactly what had happened during said year, for the sake of history. Here is the awestruck letter Hugh M. Hefner wrote to himself upon finishing the year in which he
And so he also said: “Society may urge you to live your life for somebody else. But enlightened self-interest is for the good of everybody. If you don’t care about yourself, you’re going to find it difficult to care for other people. H. L. Mencken was the one who said: ‘A puritan is somebody who is very upset because someone, somewhere, is having a good time.’”
T he Wisdom of the White Lie
I had two different letterheads—one for Stag Party and the other for my imaginary distributing company called Nationwide News Company. When I wrote a letter on the magazine’s stationery, I was the editor, publisher, or promotion, advertising, or circulation director as circumstances dictated. When I was writing to newsdealers, I was the general manager or president of Nationwide News Company. I was the entire staff of both. That’s all there was—just me, my typewriter, and that card table.
“I wanted a job that I could love,” he said. So he created one for himself, one that nobody else could ever have. He had no dough, no real experience at what he would need to do. He just let his head rumble, when he wasn’t knocking it against walls: “Sometimes I would find myself in a crowded elevator or a building lobby, and I would be overwhelmed and demoralized by the notion that I was the only one who was still unplugged and disconnected.” He would not be the first or the last one to feel such demoralization. And yet he had nothing to lose by sticking his long neck out. So he did.
I f You Don’t Reach for the Sky, You’ll Never Leave the Ground Floor
You have to calculate the odds before taking risks. But if you don’t take chances on the things you really want, then you’ll never know. Rational risk is part of what life is all about. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?
As a boy, he let a girl turn him inside out. As a man, he turned himself inside out. Girls, this time, would come later. “When you talk about self-reinvention,” he said, “the extent to which I have done it and chronicled it—done it at a conscious level—is probably the most unique and remarkable thing about my life.” He decided he was not the guy living the life he was living—married, working for people he did not want to work for, bottled up, lost as lost gets—and incited a personal rebellion. He reinvented himself, and soon enough he got the girl and the girl and the girl and the girl, et cetera.
Did we say that he got the girl?
Et cetera.
T he Importance of Self-Reinvention
I’m a dreamer, a crusader who wanted to change the world. There are so many things in life that force you into a box and force you to conform to values handed down by others. When you are very young, both society and family define you. There should be a time when you begin to define yourself for yourself.
----
Hef’s Five Lucky Breaks
When a fellow knows that he is up to something, he might well write himself an annual letter explaining exactly what had happened during said year, for the sake of history. Here is the awestruck letter Hugh M. Hefner wrote to himself upon finishing the year in which he
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