Recently,
however, I took out digital subs for both LRB and NYRB. And the rates of a
slightly more academic journal I have loved since the 70s – "Political Quarterly" – are so reasonable (15 euros for not only 4 quarterly editions but also the entire
archives) that I was also seduced by them last year.
For a few months even I
managed to get the full daily edition of "Le Monde" – until they cottoned on to the
fact that my payment had not actually gone through…
So it’s not
altogether surprising that, these past few days, I’ve been looking again at the
list (which was one of several annexes of To
Whom it May Concern – the 2019 posts) of the journals I considered worth reading.
And that I actually
took out yet another sub.
Have a look at the updated list below and see
whether you can guess which new title I succumbed to!!
The list which
I had compiled all of three years ago had started with a not altogether unjustified
crack about the
superficiality of newspaper coverage. That, in turn, raised the question of which (English
language) journals would pass a test with such criteria as –
- Depth of
treatment
- Breadth of
coverage (not just political)
- Cosmopolitan
in taste (not just anglo-saxon)
- clarity of
writing
- sceptical in
tone
My own regular
favourite reading includes The London
Review of Books, The
New York Review of Books, The Guardian Long Reads and book reviews, –
and the occasional glance at the New Yorker; New Statesman; and Spiked.
Other titles
which might lay some claims to satisfying the stringent criteria set above are -
Aeon; an
interesting new (since 2012) cultural journal
Arts
and Letters Daily; daily internet roundup from books and
articles
Book Forum; a bit
too US centred for my taste…..
Brain
Pickings; a superb personal internet bi-weekly endeavour which gives
extended excerpts from classic texts about creativity etc. One of the best
Current Affairs is a fairly new
American radical journal which looks to be very well-written eg this take-down of The Economist mag
and
this article on development
Dissent; a US leftist stalwart whose recent
analyses of ecological issues have been exemplars of typology
Eurozine; terrific stuff from a European network of 70 odd cultural journals
Jacobin; a rather too predictable US leftist mag with a poor literary style
Eurozine; terrific stuff from a European network of 70 odd cultural journals
Jacobin; a rather too predictable US leftist mag with a poor literary style
Literary
Hub;
a literary site with original selections and frequent posts
London
Review of Books; couldn’t do without it!
Los
Angeles Review of Books; great addition to book reviews from
global cites (eg Boston, Dublin)
Monthly
Review; an old leftist US stalwart with well-written and solid
analysis
Mother
Jones; more journalistic US progressive
N+1; one of the
new and smoother leftist mags
New
Humanist; an important strand of UK thought
New
Left Review; THE rather academic UK bi-monthly journal which
I’ve dipped into ever since it started in 1960
New
Republic; solid US monthly
Prospect (UK); rather too smooth UK monthly
Public
Books – an impressive recent website (2012) to encourage open
intellectual debate
Quillette – a very new journal emphasising “free thought” whose pieces are very well-written
Quillette – a very new journal emphasising “free thought” whose pieces are very well-written
Resurgence ; UK Green mag
Sceptic; celebration
of important strand of UK scepticism
Slate; more right
wing internet venture
Social
Europe; a european social democratic E-journal whose short articles
are a bit too predictable for my taste
Spiked; a very strange journal whose staff came from the "Living Marxism" group and adopt counter-intuitive attitudes to issues. See the useful http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=124 for more
The Atlantic; one of my favourite US
mags
The
Baffler; highly original leftist US bimonthly running for 30 years which I’ve
only noticed recently
The Critic - a new journal (since the end
of 2019) opposed to the cosy “left-liberal
consensus” it considers disfigures the british chattering classes. A bit parti-pris
The
Conversation; a rare venture which has academics writing more
journalistically
The
Nation; America's oldest weekly, for the
"progressive" community
The
New York Review of Books; a fortnightly I’ve been reading avidly
for the past 30 years
The
New Yorker; very impressive US writing
The
Point – a relatively new venture (5 years) which advertises itself as “the magazine
of the examined life”
Washington Independent Review; a new website
borne of the frustration about the disappearance of so many book review columns
Wired; unpredictable - often has very good material
The answer to the question I posed earlier is...... most curiously, The Point – as well, after a hiccup, as The New Yorker – the latter offering last
week a 4 month internet sub (with archival material) for only 6 dollars. I have to declare, however, that - after a full week - I’ve still not been able to activate access to that delight. Serves me right for succumbing to an offshoot of the Conde mulinational!!!!
But the digital version of “The Point” is already available - for only 31 dollars a year……..
But the digital version of “The Point” is already available - for only 31 dollars a year……..
I confess that I still have fond memories in the 1980s of "The Encounter" mag which was shockingly revealed later in the decade to have been partially funded by the CIA and which as a result shut up shop in 1990....I still have some copies in the glass-covered cabinet in the mountain house study (on the left of the pic).......
The entire set
of 1953-1990 issues are archived here – and the
range and quality of the authors given space can be admired. European notebooks – new
societies and old politics 1954-1985; is a book devoted to one
of its most regular writers, the Swiss Francois Bondy (2005)
A generation of
outstanding European thinkers emerged out of the rubble of World War II. It was
a group unparalleled in their probing of an age that had produced
totalitarianism as a political norm, and the Holocaust as its supreme
nightmarish achievement. Figures ranging from George Lichtheim, Ignazio Silone,
Raymond Aron, Andrei Amalrik, among many others, found a home in Encounter.
None stood taller or saw further than Francois Bondy of Zurich.
European
Notebooks contains most of the articles that Bondy (1915-2003) wrote
for Encounter under the stewardship of Stephen Spender, Irving
Kristol, and then for the thirty years that Melvin Lasky served as editor.
Bondy was that rare unattached intellectual, "free of every totalitarian
temptation" and, as Lasky notes, unfailing in his devotion to the
liberties and civilities of a humane social order. European
Notebooks offers a window into a civilization that came to maturity during
the period in which these essays were written.
Bondy's essays
themselves represent a broad sweep of major figures and events in the second
half of the twentieth century. His spatial outreach went from Budapest to Tokyo
and Paris. His political essays extended from George Kennan to Benito
Mussolini. And his prime metier, the cultural figures of Europe, covered
Sartre, Kafka, Heidegger and Milosz. The analysis was uniformly fair minded but
unstinting in its insights. Taken together, the variegated themes he raised in
his work as a Zurich journalist, a Paris editor, and a European homme de
lettres sketch guidelines for an entrancing portrait of the intellectual
as cosmopolitan.
