Lewis Lapham, classic or dud?

Since 1983, Lewis H. Lapham has been Editor of Harper's Magazine, one of the country's most distinguished monthly magazines. Lapham opens the Revelle Forum series with a discussion of his controversial new book, Theater of War, in which he questions the goals and the wisdom of the current "War on Terror." One need not subscribe to Lapham's points of view to be stimulated by the intelligence, wit, and articulateness that he brings to beare upon this latest chapter in our national history. His trademark style of humanistic skepticism has earned comparisons with H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, and Montaigne. The talk will be followed by a booksigning.

lapham's rules of inluence is supposably swifitan satire, so i don't think he's really fat-hatin' there. don't think he's really a health-conscious dude, he smokes like a fish. but yeah, it's just unfunny.

anyone reading the quarterly? i only got one and it bored me to tears

I'm reading his mid nineties essay collection Hotel America. Often effective. He hates Santa Monica.

i should check that out instead of re-reading 'pretensions to empire'

I subscribed to his Quarterly, which makes for great bathroom reading. It's like a high-brow "Reader's Digest."

i've checked out a few issues. i'm not thrilled by the thematic focus of each issue, but there is definitely interesting stuff in there. still prefer his 'harper's' "easy chair" to thomas frank, who just isn't hitting as hard

anyways, looking over my notes from 'lapham's rules of influence' ~

The conversations don’t always proceed along precisely the same lines—-sometimes they raise a question about whether it is more fun to drink bad wine in Cuernavaca than to ride in triumph through the streets of Santa Monica (it isn’t), or whether the proofs of honor can be exchanged for travel miles (they can’t)—-but it usually doesn’t need much more than an hour for the humble inquirers to understand that when presented with Moliere’s Tartuffe or Seymour Hersh’s portrait of John F. Kennedy, they should read the text as a cheerful self-help manual, not as bitter social satire.

what's his beef with santa monica?

new collection Age of Folly is very good

the most recent lapham's quarterly -- "flesh" - is quite good too.

On the off chance that I’d somehow failed to gauge the temper of the times, I was visited on the eve of President Clinton’s second inaugural by an old and recurring dream that placed me in an enormous empty gallery space in the Museum of Modern Art, in a crowd of New York’s “beautiful people” grazing disinterestedly on hors d’oeuvres being handed around on silver trays. The tabloid company of the elect in evening dress, the people who show up at Broadway award ceremonies and best-quality charity balls, go everywhere, know everybody, see everything, weigh the sproutings of human talent trippingly on the tongue of money, able with a single trite phrase to suck the meaning out of a comedy or tragedy, from a political idea or candidate, from any story other than the one about themselves.

Three of the gallery’s four walls served as giant movie screens showing films in various genres and time zones. The fourth wall opened through a gilded arch of triumph into what looked to be a dark closet. Free to wander at will in and out of the footage, the guests received costumes appropriate to their playing of lords and ladies in Tudor England, cabaret singers in Weimar Berlin, the hero in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the heroine in The Devil in Miss Jones.

Between cameo appearances they returned to the party in the gallery space, remarking on the food in Napoleon’s Paris, the traffic in Caesar’s Rome. Gradually it became clear that the excursions weren’t fun-loving and fancy-free. All present were playing a serious game, searching the films for the answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. Each guest was allowed only one chance to whisper the answer into the ear of the cruise director, a man in a black turtleneck sweater wearing dark glasses and a beret. The penalty for a wrong answer was severe—just how severe becoming apparent as the ranks of the rich and famous began to melt, thaw, and resolve into a dew.

The arch opening through the fourth wall led into a surgical amphitheater where gaily costumed catering staff stripped the flesh from the guests who failed the quiz, arranged the finer pieces of white and dark meat as hors d’oeuvres sent to the attention of the beautiful people still extant in the gallery. Assuming that their absent friends had simply gone on to another party, their talk as bright and empty as before, they continued their discussions of the season’s newest masterpiece while choosing a toast point decorated with the flesh of an author or artist in whom they had professed to notice the stirrings of genius.

happy halloween yall 💀

is Lapham's Quarterly the only place that he's writing these days? I figured he wouldn't have a personal Twitter account, but I'm dying to read his take on the election.