Harper's Magazine: C/D

Lapham would write these long rants at the beginning of each mag too; I think the coup article was by someone else, but I take it Lapham commissioned or at least accepted it. If he's gone, I might go back, because yeah their archives are rad, and the fiction is nice.

new yorker, evan. i kind of hate harper's.

i had a subscription to the economist one year but it made me feel so guilty because i never read it and it came like every day it seemed so the piles of it i had lying around unread were physical testament to the many, many things i didn't know.

sometimes the nyer piles up, yes, but it is more fun to read than the other magazines you're considering imo and you can take your back-new yorkers on vacation with you and they are very relaxing reading in my experience.

yeah go w/ new yorker, smart enough to not make u mad but not so taxing that u avoid it because it will be difficult

if u have a commute on public transportation its great--never piles up for me cuz i read it on the subway/train

atlantic is totally ridiculous now, they should just change the name to "challops bimonthly"

i dont hate harpers but i only ever read the "readings" and the index and the "findings" im always way disappointed by the essays and whatnot

fuck the atlantic for real

I should just get a sub to New Yorker, my mother-in-law gets it and every time we visit I spend lots of time flipping through them.

i have a visceral hatred for the economist because its a big signifier for "im a white douchebag poli-sci major who will describe himself as a 'moderate' and be totally dismissive of anyone to the left of joe lieberman despite having picked up all of my opinions from my advisor and this magazine" or at least it was in my school

i was sort of hoping that the atlantic having hua hsu and ta-nehisi coates would make it better but ummm so far it hasnt

yes i would like to except ta-nehisi coates but he can't write all their articles, unfortunately

i dont know why not it only comes out like every three months and is like 20 pages long

harper's had a very good run in the 90s but lapham became increasingly tiresome during the bush years. i know he's not there anymore but i haven't checked it lately to see the changes

i never understood what people see in the economist

i subscribed because i thought it would make me know a lot of things all at once. i cannot remember a single thing about it, though

the few times i picked it up i noticed its articles on america tended to have lots of errors, so it made me question what i was reading about the international stuff, which is why you'd pick it up in the first place (as an american)

i had a subscription to the economist one year but it made me feel so guilty because i never read it and it came like every day it seemed so the piles of it i had lying around unread were physical testament to the many, many things i didn't know.

― horseshoe, Thursday, October 15, 2009 11:04 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is precisely what happened. i let the subscription lapse, it was just too much to handle

and reading back issues of the economist is pretty much a non-starter

nyer is the best of these imo. totally OTM upthread about harper's seeming more & more like a leftist conspiracy mag. by contrast the political writing in the nyer is pretty good and usually a pretty reliable part of the magazine. the 'profiles' are also usually really good

i almost never read the fiction tho, and there are a lot of issues that i just don't have time to read. i wish they did more regular music crit, too, seems like only 1 or two issues a month has it.

i used to keep all of them too, but it got too crazy w/ all the back issues everywhere. i'd pick up an older issue and swear to myself that i had never seen that particular cover before. now i clean them out every month, so i only keep the 3 or 4 most recent issues. if there's an article i really like, i know that as a subscriber i can always access it online

but it's super cheap 4 realz - i pay like $40 a year for weekly issues, and it gets cheaper the longer you subscribe.

new york review of books!

i think they do music essays every issue--pop music reviews are more like every other issue

i am of the opinion that a lot of their critics are stupid and/or irritating

i have a visceral hatred for the economist because its a big signifier for "im a white douchebag poli-sci major who will describe himself as a 'moderate' and be totally dismissive of anyone to the left of joe lieberman despite having picked up all of my opinions from my advisor and this magazine" or at least it was in my school

― Bobby Wo (max), Thursday, October 15, 2009 11:15 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

;_; why you gotta cut to my core like that

(fwiw i like but do not subscribe to the economist, dislike lieberman, and i was a poli sci/econ double major, SO THERE)

i agree with mookieproof - it's the best by far of this bunch

"eat shit - 1,000,000 flies can't be wrong" -- the economist

i was a poli sci/econ double major

fwiw u are worse than a theater major

:C

i never understood what people see in the economist

― velko, Thursday, October 15, 2009 11:20 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark

good writing on, imo, e. europe and africa that doesn't start with, "hey! there's a country called swaziland!" or whatever.

there's a lot worse than a theater major big max and I say this as an english/classical studies dude (no horse)

cosign w/Review of Books, or even Bookforum which isn't great & is often too cursory but on the other hand gets some good essayists now and then (Vollman a few months back with a straightup incredible review of some newer Holocaust books) & won't pile up unread like NYROBs almost surely will. OTOH William Gass is writing for Harper's pretty regularly, and he's one of the best stylists alive, if a total misanthrope, but imo his ability to tease cruelty out of even the simplest idea makes him worth the price of a subscription

yeah theres way worse shit than theater majors, such as kinesiology majors, or ECON POLI-SCI DOUBLE MAJORS

haaahaahaha

the school next to mine was basically all econ/polsci's and they all had ANNOY THE LIBERAL MEDIA: TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE REAGAN-BUSH LEGACY posters in their dorm windows

not that guy

bunch of winners those dudes

luckily they are all in positions of unbelievable power making policy in washington LOL ;_;

if it makes u feel better, i am in a position of no power in not washington

i shouldnt be fronting, i was president of the young democrats one year

luckily they are all in positions of unbelievable power making policy in washington LOL ;_;

most of them went straight to wall street or the chicago board of trade and I am assuming a number of them moved back in with their parents last year

unlike my classmates who were smokin weed then and are doubtless smokin weed now

holla

if u have a commute on public transportation its great--never piles up for me cuz i read it on the subway/train

^^this

oh someone recommended the new york review of books the other day!

The intro essay for Harper's (formerly all Lapham, now revolving I think?) is usually amusingly indecipherable.

nyrb rules but its so giant and unruly i feel like a total bag reading it in public

i would read it on the bus while standing and feel like HM HELLO YES I LIVE THE LIFE OF THE MIND AND GARGLE TESTICLES

hoosbag

i haven't been reading any of these mags for a while now - i used to subscribe to them all and when i worked at the hospital i would just steal old ones - and i don't miss them at all.

there really needs to be some new magazines. or something. i would tell people to subscribe to a good science magazine. or smithsonian. or national geo. i find that stuff more entertaining these days than old guard handwringers and lethemite types.

reading the NYRB online feels really, really strange, but I do it

i had a subscription to the economist one year but it made me feel so guilty because i never read it and it came like every day it seemed so the piles of it i had lying around unread were physical testament to the many, many things i didn't know.

HA HA. Yeah, substitue the Economist for Scientific American, and I felt the same way. I stopped my subscription two years ago, and I still have some back issues to read.