and more explicit about the moral value of True Story. In April 1924, he penned a two-page editorial titled “True Story Magazine: A Great Moral Force,” in which he laid out the “high ideals back of this publication.” He argued that True Story “readers are made better morally, mentally, spiritually and even physically through the influence of the stories published herein.”94 Rehearsing arguments forged in his early battles with Comstock, Macfadden argued that ignorance facilitates personal and cultural decay: “The Evils that were everywhere devitalizing the race, the tragedies that have crushed human lives often beyond recall were presented in such great detail that I could not fail to see the truth in all its appalling aspects. And standing out from these mountains of human catastrophes was the ever present excuse: ‘I DID NOT KNOW!’” Americans “fell into Evil,” Macfadden concluded, because “they did not recognize its character.”95
Against the power of a misrecognized evil, “True Story lights life's pathway. It sheds brilliant rays of knowledge upon the road that everyone must travel.” It “sets up warning signs,” it decries “selfishness and greed,” and it exposes the “tremendous force” of the “sex instinct.” On this last, volatile subject, Macfadden emphasized that True Story “clearly indicat[es] the necessity of living in conformity with the great moral law laid down by Jesus of Nazareth”: “THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.” True Story Magazine, Macfadden concluded, “clearly and emphatically put forth this great Biblical truth.” By putting this truth in the form of “strikingly dramatic, intensely interesting stories,” True Story provided “education in the form of entertainment.” And, I might add, entertainment in the form of confessions in which no moral was left to the imagination of the reader.
So confident was Macfadden in the high moral calling of True Story that he set up a “ministerial advisory board.” Composed of clergymen from a variety of faiths, the board was given full authority over every article slotted for publication in True Story. Although there is no way to verify this, Oursler claimed in 1929 that since the board's constitution not an article had been printed in True Story without the full approval of the ministers.96 What can be verified is the energy Macfadden spent reminding his readers that each true story had already received clerical sanction. To publicize his ministerial board, Macfadden occasionally dedicated a page or two of True Story to reprinting quotations culled from ministers and other readers. Typically arranged in two columns under an oversized title that announced True Story as a “Great Moral Force,” these quotations were presented as evidence of True Story's moral virtue and they functioned as a constant reminder of how the bed shadows that filled the pages of True Story were to be read.97 The quotations themselves are deeply repetitive; a small selection may stand in for the lot. A certain Mrs. O. H. England wrote, “The stories are morally refreshing, for while they take us through the tunnels of life, they always bring us safely back to the sunlight of duty's path. There is an uplifting afterthought and theme in its stories which distinguish them from and make them superior to any other stories of sex and life. After one reads some of the magazines of sex stories, there follows a feeling mental degradation and an inclination to conceal them from the eyes of our associates. But I am always proud to have my copy of True Story lying in a conspicuous place.”98
Surrounding Mrs. England's excerpted opinion were twelve other quotations of similar length and similar substance. From a broader perspective, this page of quotations testifying to True Story's “moral force” was itself surrounded, in the proximate issues, by more quotation-filled, minister-laden pages bearing witness to the “sunlit path” of True Story. Taken together, these quotations provide True Story's readership with a massive and intrusive rhetorical primer. They provide instructions for reading authenticity. Lest authentic stories of human sexuality be interpreted as salacious or lewd, the rhetorical primer—provided by True Story in the form of ministerial letters to the editor—provided a hermeneutic according to which the bed shadows testified to their own darkness and pushed the reader toward duty's “sunlit path.”
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Macfadden used the shortcomings of the other confession magazines as an opportunity to teach his readers about the genre of the true story and how it was to be read. In May 1924 he carefully distinguished True Story from its competition on the basis of its moral rigor. Given the “extraordinary demand” for true stories, Macfadden noted that imitators were inevitable. Moreover, he insisted, “we have no objection to them when their efforts are imbued by the high ideals that inspire our True Story product.” Unfortunately, Macfadden noted that the competition was “unwholesome,” “lewd and obscene”: “Their idea of a true story is an all-around filthy tale that presents lascivious details of various kinds.” Macfadden, for his part, claimed a very different definition of a true story, and a different definition of authenticity: “We believe that [true] stories should be made to assume an attitude of respect towards the highest type of morality, and that the outworkings of human instincts and emotions should be portrayed naturally, cleanly as well as dramatically. For twenty-five years the publishers of True Story have been engaged in publishing literature that has had a distinctly upbuilding influence upon its readers. It has helped to make their lives more wholesome, more satisfying and more successful.”99 Macfadden's claim—made in 1924, five years into True Story's life—that he had been publishing “upbuilding” literature for twenty-five years is telling. It reveals that, from Macfadden's perspective, True Story was a continuation of Physical Culture, which, besides being founded in 1899, was expressly dedicated to fighting Comstock's morality by censorship.100
This is the “true story idea”: the unvarnished prose guarantees the authenticity of the tales, and the authenticity of tales guarantees the propagation of moral virtue. If both of these equations were rehearsed ad nauseam, it is because both were highly contested. Macfadden was fighting not only the likes of Mencken, who argued that unrefined prose was a signal of unrefined thought, but also a Comstock-inspired reaction that decried True Story as lewd, suggestive, and even pornographic.101 With such opponents as these, and with the meaning of confession in the balance, is it any surprise that Macfadden took extra care to ensure that the two million readers in his charge understood clearly the genre of confession and the sexual politics it served?
Conclusion: Confession and Sexuality
Lurking in the founding and development of True Story Magazine are three important lessons for rhetorical critics. First, in the 1920s the boundaries of the confession were redrawn along political lines. Why did Macfadden bar his first editor from using a “fancy pencil”? Why did he insist on unvarnished prose and stories composed of monosyllabic words? Answer: His own sexual politics. Macfadden's crusade against Comstock required him to emphasize the truth of his stories, and the unvarnished, monosyllabic form of his confessions was a powerful means of doing so. If, as I have elsewhere suggested, the equation of inarticulacy and authenticity has become a standard marker of our contemporary confessional culture, it is important to remember that this equation is never self-evident.102 In the case of Macfadden and True Story, it was driven by his political agenda.
Second, if cultural politics influenced the very form of the confession, the development of the genre was itself ingredient in the shaping of American sexual mores. Greg Mullins has insightfully called Macfadden's Physical Culture a “well-muscled closet.” On his reading, the magazine displayed erotic pictures of the nude male body, but diffused the erotic charge by restricting the range of the nude body's meaning to aesthetic or medical values.103 Following the same logic, it is possible to understand True Story as a “confessional closet.” It was a place where the confessional form itself was placed in the service of conservative sexual politics. Lest his readership miss this point, Macfadden surrounded every illicit story with sidebars, explanations, and rationalizations aplenty—all designed to reinforce the association between nakedness and Christian virtue. So long as Macfadden had his way, bed shadows, stories of sexual deviancy, and even experience itself confirmed the legitimacy of the most austere sexual politics. When
