The writing doesn’t get easier, but the work becomes play

July 30, 2024 12:17 PM

“I think the argument is not liberals-conservatives, Democrats-Republicans or left-right,” he told The Christian Science Monitor. “The argument is between past and future. That’s where a line forms: what is regressive and what weighs you down, the too-old or stultified or barbarous notions, and what takes you forward and gives you a hope of discovering a change, the freedom of the imagination.” from Lewis H. Lapham, Longtime Editor of Harper’s, Dies at 89 [NYT; ungated]

Lewis H. Lapham | 1935-2024: A statement from the Board of the American Agora Foundation [Lapham's Quarterly]
Remembering Lewis H. Lapham by Kira Brunner Don
Lewis Lapham Salvaged From History What Was Useful, Beautiful, and True [The Nation; ungated]
Lewis Lapham, The Art of Editing No. 4 [The Paris Review, 2019]

Lewis Lapham, previously

posted by chavenet (25 comments total)

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posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:23 PM on July 30

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posted by briank at 12:27 PM on July 30

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I started reading Harper's in the late 90s, our high school library had it and I enjoyed the Index if nothing else, although I vividly remember one long-form piece about someone growing poppies in their yard and how that was a criminal act because they knew those poppies could be used for the production of opium. I ended up subscribing to it while in university, which included 9/11 and the run up to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It really felt like Harper's was the only establishment media that was even trying to put the American war machine to account. I cancelled my subscription when I moved to Japan and when I came back and thought about resubscribing Lapham was no longer there.

I bought a couple of issues of the Quarterly but didn't get into it enough to spring for a subscription. In my mind it would just go on forever but nothing really works that way. Nothing good anyways.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:28 PM on July 30 [4 favorites]

I vividly remember one long-form piece about someone growing poppies in their yard and how that was a criminal act because they knew those poppies could be used for the production of opium.

That would have been by Michael Pollan. Here's a link to it, but access requires a subscription to the mag.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 12:31 PM on July 30 [6 favorites]

(apologies for possible derail)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 12:33 PM on July 30 [1 favorite]

the only subscription I've had to any printed media is Harpers in the mid-2000s, for reasons similar to any portmanteau's above.

and I have thought how MAGA wants to regress back to past mistakes, while small-p progressives wish to make our future world work better than all that.
posted by torokunai at 12:42 PM on July 30 [3 favorites]

I remember the Utne Reader and its founder, Eric Utne, and editor, Jay Walljasper. They also had thoughtful takes on current issues -- but they didn't edit so much as curate or collect already-published pieces. Still, in the 1990s, it was one of few good sources of non-mainstream ideas like Harper's.

I remember in high school being given a multiply-photocopied excerpt published in Harper's, from the book "Rivethead" by Ben Hamper. It was amazing stuff. (That teacher, Rob Peick, only retired this year after 50 years in the classroom. All hail!) If you subscribe, the excerpt is here.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:55 PM on July 30 [7 favorites]

thanks for the post -

Long time reader (and sometime subscriber to) Harper's. Though for whatever reason, I never gave Lapham himself much thought. And now I shall ...



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posted by philip-random at 12:57 PM on July 30 [1 favorite]

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I was wondering (and worried) why his podcast had dropped off.
posted by ikahime at 12:57 PM on July 30 [3 favorites]

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posted by humbug at 12:59 PM on July 30

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posted by lord_wolf at 1:08 PM on July 30

I still have a subscription to Harper's, but when Lapham was editor, his pieces were the thing I turned to after ip the index.

I always appreciated the pieces I read in LQ, though never got around to subscribing.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:46 PM on July 30 [2 favorites]

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posted by doctornemo at 1:46 PM on July 30

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posted by Inkslinger at 2:16 PM on July 30

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He made a movie in 2005, The American Ruling Class. Here's Barbara Ehrenreich performing the song "Nickel and Dimed" from the movie (song starts at around 6 minutes into the clip). Lapham is the source for my earlier MeFi comments on interests vs values, being seen to be doing well (achieving affluence) by doing good and Americans needing a regular income of $500k/yr to be 'fully human' in the eyes of our ruling class.

Like Lapham himself, the movie is eccentric but insightful in a way hard to get anywhere else. You may hate the conceit on which he hung the movie but I feel the ideas within are well worth pondering.
posted by zaixfeep at 2:35 PM on July 30 [8 favorites]

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A guiding light, because, especially of Harper's. For the last 50+ years.
posted by kozad at 3:30 PM on July 30 [1 favorite]

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90s and 00s subscriber to Harpers as well. Rolled up in my bag for long subway rides. Those were the days.
posted by maggiemaggie at 3:52 PM on July 30 [5 favorites]

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posted by ourobouros at 4:03 PM on July 30

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posted by HearHere at 5:32 PM on July 30

His writing was so formative for me. His books of essays are incredibly good and informed so much about how I thought and think about the world; they got my mind working in a constantly and fundamentally humane direction.

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posted by Gadarene at 7:19 PM on July 30 [1 favorite]

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posted by dougfelt at 10:05 PM on July 30

Harper's was a North Star for me in the 80s as a young wannabe intellectual with one academic foot in the arts and another in the sciences. I subscribed again this year after a long hiatus. I still think very fondly of a collection in the readings section of a number of excerpts of different specialty magazine's conceptions of heaven. An American bowling magazine's idea was beautiful. A bunch of middle class adults (just like me!) sitting in comfortable chairs at the lake drinking a couple of beers and getting along while the kids frolicked. That sounded like a pretty relatable and achievable heaven. Maybe something everybody could have a chance at.

Lapham did something special in publishing. We're a bit poorer for his passing.

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posted by kaymac at 9:32 AM on July 31 [2 favorites]

That Paris Review interview is a fascinating summary of his career.

History is the vast store of human consciousness adrift in the gulf of time, the present living in the past and the past living in the present. So when I read Shakespeare, Jefferson, Twain, or Machiavelli, I’m with them in time present. It’s why we still read Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and Flaubert—what survives the wreck of time is the force of the imagination and the power of expression.

posted by ovvl at 9:51 AM on July 31 [2 favorites]

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posted by neuron at 2:38 PM on August 1

I read Fortune's Child as a younger person back in the day, and liked it enough to want to buy a copy. Out of print by a matter of months, hard to find. So I got in touch with Harper's on the off chance that he had a few extra copies.

He did. Would I like to come by to get one?

I would.

Still have it, inscribed and all.

(I find it hilarious that the above link is to the edition I have, but inscribed to Richard Mellon Scaife, whom Lapham kind of tore a new one off of in at least one essay.)
posted by BWA at 4:21 PM on August 1 [1 favorite]