I bought the Atlantic Monthly's 150th Anniversary edition and read a bunch of those "American Idea" essays on the PATH. Eughhhhh - so fucking inane.
does this mean i should cxl my subscrip to atlantic y/n
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 15 October 2007 02:44 (sixteen years ago) link
I don't know - I haven't read the Atlantic in a long time, but I generally don't remember most of it being anywhere near as bad as the FOB stuff in the current issue. Even the rest of this particular issue might be better.
― Hurting 2, Monday, 15 October 2007 02:54 (sixteen years ago) link
I just subscribed for the last issue and it was kinda ok. I wish Harper's was that long, but then I suppose qual would decline.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 15 October 2007 02:57 (sixteen years ago) link
that mcmurdo thing is some of the worst post-gonzo bullshit whoever nero is, he's sure to write a well-timed shit of a bestseller
― El Tomboto, Monday, 15 October 2007 15:38 (sixteen years ago) link
I also just resubscribed after many years away, and also got a bit stuck on the mink. I thought he was a cute enough mink, though.
― Casuistry, Monday, 15 October 2007 16:16 (sixteen years ago) link
I want to cut out that dotted line bit and tape it to my collar.
How many people even wear fur these days? I thought ermine and the color violet were the province of kings alone. And Prince, of course.
― Abbott, Monday, 15 October 2007 19:20 (sixteen years ago) link
There was some sort of retro pro-fur movement a while back, a sort of reclamation of the right to wear carcass, a few years ago, or so the NPR-ish media told me.
― Casuistry, Monday, 15 October 2007 22:14 (sixteen years ago) link
The Bush administration's forbearance as Gen. Pervez Musharraf proclaims, like [vainglorious monarch], that [famous megalomaniacal statement] recasts [open Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to any random page, close eyes, plunge finger into text, and insert here a précis of incident described therein] as opera bouffe. The sham outrage teases forth memories of the contortions displayed by [famous Ottoman acrobat of the 15th century] or the prevarications of [obscure three-fingered gangster of the 1930s] as the Katie Courics and Wolf Blitzers of their day distracted the starving masses with [celebratory ritual performed by an island-based indigenous people] and competitions to mimic the cry of the mighty [extinct animal from the Cretaceous period].
Lewis Lapham Mad Libs! How to write the sentence he has been redrafting for 40 years.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:40 (sixteen years ago) link
his column on how "Iraq is just like the housing bubble" was so awful.
― milo z, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:42 (sixteen years ago) link
Even when I first subscribed to Harper's in college and was still in awe of anything liberal I hated Lapham.
― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:47 (sixteen years ago) link
Has anyone read Lapham's Quarterly?
That Mad Lib is fucking golden, as are the mailing instructions.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:48 (sixteen years ago) link
I think the guy is o-kay.
The column is spot-on. No one else uses so much erudition and learning to say so little.
― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:51 (sixteen years ago) link
I'll try to condense his stuff:
St. Andrews: Although arranged like St. Andrews, the course at North Berwick presents a wider variance of hazards, and possibly because of the names of the holes ("Gate," "Perfection," "Pit"), what little I could remember of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress came suddenly to mind in the elegiac light of a slowly ebbing sunset. I played the round in the company of two other solitary golfers on the hole ahead and the hole behind, three wayfarers set forth on the Scots' equivalent of the road to Canterbury, each of us in turn raising the flag of hope for the fellow pilgrim who maybe had come thus far without having fallen afoul, at least not yet, of Worldly Wiseman or Giant Despair.
Condensed: St. Andrews golf course left me in reverie.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:53 (sixteen years ago) link
I had a hard time even parsing this one:
Extended King Richard analogy:
When King Richard the Lionheart joined the Third Crusade at Acre in 1191 and there failed to find the treasure promised by God, he insisted that the infidels had swallowed their jewels and gold coins in order to deny him the reward owing to his royal majesty and Christian virtue. His companions, less discreet than the ones currently for rent in Basra and Tikrit, cut open the stomachs of 3,000 Muslims in the search for truth, which, in the event, proved as determined, if eventually as disappointing, as the Bush Administration's quest for the thermonuclear genie in Saddam Hussein's magic lamp.
Condensed: You can't eat things totemically, esp. if the qualities you want aren't there in the first place.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:56 (sixteen years ago) link
"Pretensions to Empire" excerpt:
The train from Paris to Brussels passes through fields sown for 2,000 years with the seed of war, and on the way north last February 1 to the opening sessions of this year's European Parliament, I was reminded of the brightly beribboned armies—Saxon, Roman, Norman, English, French, Spanish, Austrian, German, and American—that had enriched the soil with the compost of human glory.
Condensed: I thought about a lot of dead people on a train.
― Abbott, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:57 (sixteen years ago) link
"Choir of Prostitutes":
When I see Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani being bundled around the country in a flutter of media consultants fitting words into their mouths, I think of the makeup artists adjusting the ribbons in Emperor Nero's hair before sending him into an amphitheater to sing with a choir of prostitutes.
Hilary & Guiliani – oh, you two!
― Abbott, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 01:58 (sixteen years ago) link
i have a real hate/love for this guy
― rrrobyn, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 02:02 (sixteen years ago) link
"Brightly beribboned armies [...] that had enriched the soil with the compost of human glory" He's actually Terry Pratchett, isn't he?
― Øystein, Wednesday, 14 November 2007 03:12 (sixteen years ago) link
got renewal notice in the mail (why don't they just email? eesh. maybe i check 'no' on that box?) and considering that i have put my last few issues of the mag in a pile of 'to be read' i had to think a little abt renewing. then i remembered that the reason i subscribed in the first place was b/c of the online archives. and right now i am reading an article about 'social life in russia' from 1889! it is great! so ok harper's you have yr renewal.
― rrrobyn, Sunday, 24 August 2008 13:58 (sixteen years ago) link
Fuk, yeah the archives. I totally haven't taken advantage of those and now I've been thinking about not renewing. I've just gotten tired of the formulaic "THE COMING CRISIS OF _____ [detail from Garden of Earthly Delights]" covers. The last straw for me was the contagious Tazmanian Devil cancer that will kill us all.
― Hurting 2, Sunday, 24 August 2008 14:55 (sixteen years ago) link
bahahahahahahaha, that is kind of true. But they always have something fun and unexpected, too, like that recent thing on the Magic Olympics.
― Abbott, Sunday, 24 August 2008 19:02 (sixteen years ago) link
WHY (poitician running for office) WILL FUXOR TEH WORLD. Glad you took on Giuliani and Romney in the past year – mad challops, bros.
This makes me want to create a Harper's Mad Libs.
― Abbott, Sunday, 24 August 2008 19:03 (sixteen years ago) link
I've just gotten tired of the formulaic "THE COMING CRISIS OF _____ [detail from Garden of Earthly Delights]"
Yeah I tend to ignore them and just do the Readings and Fiction and Criticism sections. Sometimes the Postcards section is a real gem too, like that one from a couple months ago about the crust punks floating the Mississippi.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 24 August 2008 20:56 (sixteen years ago) link
the Notebooks vary widely from STFU dumbass (the one about paying taxes to blow shit up) to OTM (public deference to high office)
Still better than when they were all written by Lapham, I guess
― milo z, Sunday, 24 August 2008 21:17 (sixteen years ago) link
Ach, the newest issue (Jan. '09 – THE FUTURE) is kind of the worst. A 3-page index of reruns about George Bush, and all the articles are bleak retrospectives about "damn if the past eight years weren't balls p.s. the world is going to end & we're fuxored). Oh shit was it the worst issue.
― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Monday, 15 December 2008 18:56 (fifteen years ago) link
As Rick Johnson once wrote, "Avoiding what subject?"
― If Timi Yuro would be still alive, most other singers could shut up, Monday, 15 December 2008 19:08 (fifteen years ago) link
the article about Saakashvili + Georgia was good, i thought? as someone who knows very little about the region. i can't even look at that Bush + the economy infographic, though; it makes me want to die.
― horseshoe, Monday, 15 December 2008 19:16 (fifteen years ago) link
i liked reading the dfw eulogies in the 'readings' section
― beyonc'e (max), Monday, 15 December 2008 19:17 (fifteen years ago) link
i mean didnt "like" but appreciated
yes i liked those, too; saunders made me tear up. so did delillo, actually.
― horseshoe, Monday, 15 December 2008 19:18 (fifteen years ago) link
ya. i hope i can have ppl who are as articulate and intelligent speak at my funeral.
― beyonc'e (max), Monday, 15 December 2008 19:21 (fifteen years ago) link
also good source to mine for my modern authors fanfic
― beyonc'e (max), Monday, 15 December 2008 19:22 (fifteen years ago) link
"damn if the past eight years weren't balls p.s. the world is going to end & we're fuxored
this is every issue of the last year and a half imo
― so i said let me HOOS the beats and steen (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, 15 December 2008 19:25 (fifteen years ago) link
I'll def have to stop at the bookstore & read the DFW pieces though.
Agreed on the suckage of latest issue.
By the way, Abbott, to answer your question from a year ago about Lapham's Quarterly, I LOVE IT. They keep getting better as they go on, and the latest issue, "Ways of Learning", is their best yet.
― Z S, Monday, 15 December 2008 19:38 (fifteen years ago) link
Nice!
― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Monday, 15 December 2008 20:09 (fifteen years ago) link
guys i want a mag subscription, do i get
--harper's--nyer--atlantic--other (suggest, plz!)
― a perfect urkel (gbx), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:24 (fourteen years ago) link
nyer has some good stuff sometimes but since it's a weekly it piles up all over the place but you feel guilty about just throwing away old copies so soon you have old copies of the nyer all over the place like some kind of urbane hobo
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:25 (fourteen years ago) link
that is what happened to me with the economist
― a perfect urkel (gbx), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:26 (fourteen years ago) link
economist is pricey!! but the snide photo captions are worth it imo
― goole, Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:29 (fourteen years ago) link
i have some insanely cheap nyer subscription--like 29 bucks a year?--and i've had it forever, so i suffer from the urbane hobo problem, but i don't feel bad about it, since it's so cheap. i've had harper's, too, on and off, but their non-fiction just isn't as good as the nyers. though i think *generally* the fiction in the nyer is suckage.
if time is an issue (lol doctor gbx) i would suggest a monthly, like harper's? i dunno, depends on much time ya got
― pariah carey (Mr. Que), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:29 (fourteen years ago) link
only one with cryptic now = harper's, so I vote for that.
― toast alien, remember barbecue!! (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:29 (fourteen years ago) link
vladimir-putin-in-tuxedo.jpgPutin on the ritz
― goole, Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:30 (fourteen years ago) link
atlantic has changed so much in the eight years i've subscribed. william langewiesche's series on the unmaking of the wtc is what hooked me. he's long gone. david bradley bought it and it hasn't been the same--feels ever more bloggy, or like an expanded economist. the long articles aren't as long. there's at least one jeff goldberg or andrew sullivan "how to fix the world" article per, which doesn't do much for me.
― W i l l, Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:31 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah see that is the thing, the piling up, and the lack of time. :-/
― a perfect urkel (gbx), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:32 (fourteen years ago) link
my suggestion to you is no nyer, then :/
― pariah carey (Mr. Que), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:32 (fourteen years ago) link
no more fiction in the atlantic either, though at least that means i never have to encounter christopher buckley again. c michael curtis has bizarre taste.
sandra tsing loh is always a treat.
― W i l l, Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:33 (fourteen years ago) link
i think the atlantic does a once a year fiction issue in august
― pariah carey (Mr. Que), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:34 (fourteen years ago) link
so harper's, then, huh
― a perfect urkel (gbx), Thursday, 15 October 2009 15:37 (fourteen years ago) link
i was in the uk, we were watching gritty dramas about the marital tensions of coalminers & their wives, there was no room for this humour about hollywood & crushing on prince
― absurdly pro-D (schlump), Sunday, 25 November 2012 17:41 (eleven years ago) link
Guy who wrote the Brautigan book also wrote the book Angel Heart is based on, Fallen Angel, I think, and some kind of historical whodunit featuring Arthur Conan Doyle and Kit Carson, maybe. Counterpoint is a pretty classy imprint, think I may have started a go-nowhere thread about it.
― Roadside Prisunic (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 25 November 2012 17:56 (eleven years ago) link
Falling Angel. Conan Doyle and Houdini.
― Roadside Prisunic (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 25 November 2012 18:00 (eleven years ago) link
decent piece from the publisher: http://harpers.org/blog/2013/03/obamas-real-political-program/
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 22 March 2013 19:02 (eleven years ago) link
i really loved the ehrenreich excerpt
― mustread guy (schlump), Saturday, 8 March 2014 18:20 (ten years ago) link
Doug Henwood's Hillary takedown is very good and fair-minded, although I'm not sure what it accomplishes since I feel like a lot of people already don't love her and will vote for her anyway in the seeming absence of other options.
The ISIS article is great, maybe best thing I've read on the topic so far.
― my jaw left (Hurting 2), Friday, 24 October 2014 06:00 (nine years ago) link
technological workplace monitoring article freaking me out
i just subscribed to thisthere is this kind of shimmering vein of newness, presentness, running through some of the best harper's things, something i can't find elsewherethe list of asmr requests last issue, the piece on tech libertarians, just fragmentsreally a nice part of my month
― tender is the late-night daypart (schlump), Sunday, 22 February 2015 02:00 (nine years ago) link
&
did anyone read the Values-of-a-Solitary-Life article
i kinda found it simultaneously unbearable, for its outlook, & valuable, for its frame of reference
― tender is the late-night daypart (schlump), Tuesday, 31 March 2015 01:37 (nine years ago) link
Solitude is overrated
Believe me
― 龜, Tuesday, 31 March 2015 02:27 (nine years ago) link
really feel youkind of a hard piece to read occuyping some of the same spaces as the author without having made lemonade from them
― tender is the late-night daypart (schlump), Tuesday, 31 March 2015 02:58 (nine years ago) link
i wonder just how many pieces lewis lapham has written decrying american politics/society with comparisons to the fall of rome (republic or empire, take your pick)
not that he's *wrong*, but it's a very specific and tiresome hammer he wields. mixed it up by going with the greeks this last time, at least
― mookieproof, Monday, 26 October 2015 23:15 (eight years ago) link
i couldn't even bear to start that article.
― slam dunk, Tuesday, 27 October 2015 00:48 (eight years ago) link
lol, I haven't read him in years but I feel like that was every "Easy Chair" (or whatever they called the editor's column at the time) he ever wrote. He seemed completely useless to me as a writer and thinker.
― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, 28 October 2015 03:43 (eight years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSlAnIbWoAAGoVF.png
― mookieproof, Friday, 30 October 2015 16:29 (eight years ago) link
smdh
"When journalists themselves wage campaigns to suppress the writing of other journalists, and intend to destroy a magazine for not toeing their ideological line, you can see how free speech truly is on the line." https://t.co/BjFbmBgqHJ— Harper's Magazine (@Harpers) January 12, 2018
― mookieproof, Friday, 12 January 2018 20:59 (six years ago) link
🙄
― The Bridge of Ban Louis J (silby), Friday, 12 January 2018 21:23 (six years ago) link
There are some judgments in that piece that bypass "right-wing columnist" and go straight to "failed human"
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 12 January 2018 21:29 (six years ago) link
https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
dud
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:21 (four years ago) link
the motives of these signatories aside, there's no attempt (by some) to establish thoughtcrime in the name of progressivism right now, huh? Check.
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:24 (four years ago) link
the motives of these signatories aside
sorry can't extricate letter from motives of signatories
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:28 (four years ago) link
which likely vary except in Wokeland
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:34 (four years ago) link
that's where i live
― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 22:35 (four years ago) link
On the positive side, my homie wrote this one:https://harpers.org/archive/2020/07/this-is-not-a-test-disaster-city-texas/
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 7 July 2020 23:06 (four years ago) link