Stone

Stone is not remotely the same magazine today, but some of the influence of its glory days remains: The line from Hun Thompson's quintessentially '60s stories (the infamous Fear and Loath series) to the hip contemporary reportage of, say, Laureen Dowd in The New York Times is a fairly straight one. And, somewhat to my surprise, I'm still affected by those early triumphs as well. I found myself not just saddened but personally hurt to learn from Draper's book that my old hero Esterhas made things up. I shouldn't care so much, I thought; that was a long time ago. Then I thought: Draper shouldn't care so much either.

The problem with books about magazines is that they are written by magazine writers, and these writers always see magazines from a certain perspective. That perspective has something to do with money and fame (Draper criticizes Stone owner Jean Werner, for instance, for banning most authors' names from the cover, an issue only a writer could nd of any consequence). But even more than that, it has to do with emotional self-interest; certain magazines at certain times have become the repositories of all the hopes that magazine writers have for their craft. This was never more true than during Stone's golden age. One former writer tells Draper that Werner missed the chance to make the magazine ''easily the most important magazine of our time,'' a sentiment that is echoed by virtually every old hand Draper interviews. In the end, you see, magazines always break the hearts of their writers, and that is the story of Stone, too.

Draper quotes Werner as saying that it was ''never his aim to establish a training camp for New Journalism.'' This information, placed at the very end of the book, comes as no surprise. The bulk of the evidence in the preceding 360-plus pages supports Werner's contention. From the moment the 21-year-old Werner started it in October 1967, Stone was never completely pure, at least not as journalists de ne purity. Werner used his magazine to reward his friends and pan his enemies, and there was always an element of censorship: The magazine trod very softly around the music industry, where its advertising revenues lay. Werner was shameless about using the magazine's growing clout as his entree to the rich and famous. Even Werner's original insight — that rock & roll deserved to be taken seriously — eventually became stale. Draper takes no small delight in pointing out that former Stone critic Joan Parelles found more freedom to write intelligent rock criticism after he moved to The New York Times, of all places.