Fellow Substack writer and McMinnville resident David Bates (“Artlandia”) recently asked his readers to tell him about memorable magazine articles they’d read. An intriguing query. I wrote to say I was heavily influenced by two magazines, one being The Atlantic; as a college student in the 1970s, its fiction was particularly impressive. One story I remember well was about a college professor who is convinced he has discovered a case of plagiarism in a student’s scholarly paper and he goes to great lengths to find out the source – with a rich comeuppance resulting. Great story.
The other influence, in the same period, was Harper’s, then edited by the redoubtable Lewis Lapham. Harper’s was, and is, an almost schizophrenic blend of deep, long reads mixed with myriad short excerpts – lists, poems, letters, memos, once-secret government papers, historical pieces, pop-culture slices – that grab-bag sensibility (Lapham would probably hate the term) I so love. In recent years the magazine has devoted its pack page to a packed, almost stream-of-consciousness recitation mostly of recent findings or theories from arcane and bizarre scientific and sociological studies: fragments in high concentration.
Lapham’s economics-oriented books I’ve dabbled in, including a recent re-read of “On Money,” which holds up quite well. In reviewing my Randomary list of 366 quotes from 366 books I compiled a few years ago, I found this Lapham quote (page 171) from "Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy.” It was published by Penguin Books, in 2004, so, not that long ago, but it could be from today and not 20 years ago:
“Among the country's political virtues, candor is the one most necessary to the health and well-being of our mutual enterprise. Unless we try to tell one another the truth about what we know and think and see, we might as well amuse ourselves -- for as long as somebody in uniform allows us to do do -- with fairy tales. To the extent that a democratic society gives its citizens the chance to speak in their own voices and listens to what they have to say, it gives itself the chance not only of discovering its multiple glories and triumphs but also of surviving its multiple follies and crimes."
Counterpoint of sorts comes a week later. Given the current state of our nation’s “mutual enterprise,” the entry in Randomary one week later, page 178, practically gives me chills. I don’t endorse castigating journalists but I view William Butler Yeats’ poem as mostly satire … and it feels like nothing changes:
The Old Cross
“A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home and drink your beer
And let the neighbors vote ...”
— N.R.
I also love The Atlantic and Harper’s. Although I haven’t read Harper’s in a long while. I don’t agree with Yeats however, we should make sure to vote — especially this year.
Great start to the day some KNR and HDT