Lewis H. LaphamBesprekingen

As of February 2024, the last printed issue of LQ which went on hiatus in November 2023.

As of February 2024, the last published issue of LQ. The elecrtonic issue is available to subscribers as a downloadable pdf document to elecronic edition subscribers.

I loved his essays in Harpers, but it is one thing to read them once a month and another to read them all back to back.

This collection of essays documents historic events that approached apocaplyptic proportions. From the Roman disaster at Pompei to the twentieth century the events described seemed to be the end of the world to contemporary observers. In retrospect they provide a record of the way humans have survived over the ages.½

Why do people who are already impossibly rich cheat steal and defraud? Because there is always somebody else who has even more. The best look at the dishonest rich ever written.

NA

Amazing how few women writers were found worthy of inclusion in this volume.

Just a really fun read. Full of those fun legal trivia that is bound to entertain law students, lawyers and those who dislike lawyers (in other words, the entire universe of human beings). Where else would you learn that Lincoln started to study law because he found Blackstone's Commentaries in a barrel he bought? Or that Blackstone himself only practiced law for 6 years before retiring because he felt like he "had a little something called principle"? The book is full of fun little cocktail tidbits like that.

Substance-wise I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of art with the works. The book is really a collection of short works. In particular, I appreciated the fact that the authors and their short biography was put at the end of the work cited. At least, speaking for myself, I have a tendency (though I try to fight it) to dismiss the work of authors I dislike too quickly. By putting the author at the end, I have often been surprised about agreeing with an author that I might have otherwise dismissed too hastily.

The selection is interesting, focusing on broader notions of justice and its relationship to the law. There are pieces that hold up the law as sacred, necessary for government, and others that critique the law as a tool of the powerful, the rich (and much of the surprise is how old these themes are and how many cultures these themes span). Much of the work in here is probably more akin to political philosophy than law, but to some that's a strength not a weakness. The collection includes historically interesting works, like Napoleon's letter to his brother to create a legal code, Gibbon's explanation of Justinian's legal code, Galileo's trial, or Anne Boleyn's letter asking for mercy (she was denied that mercy). There are longer essays on topics as topical as the Trump administration, and the power of the state (in particular, modern policing) or as tangental as Samuel Johnson's interest in the law. There's a particular cosmopolitain flair to the selections made. There are works from the great enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, to medieval Arthur legends, to Chinese legalists (Han Fei), apartheid South Africa, to Ottoman legal scholars. I enjoyed in particular the side by side comparison of Ginsburg's celebration of the role of women in the law with Al-Mawardi's stern explanation for why women should not practice law.

I do have a few general qualifications. For one the selection is clearly not made by a lawyer (this is probably a good thing). It includes little important case law, even the important ones like Brown, Marbury, or Miranda. Instead, the case law included mostly are there to serve a whimsical purpose, for example Nix v. Hedden, that held for the purposes of the Tariff Act of 1883, a tomato is a vegetable. In fact, one can tell that this is not written by a lawyer by reading the short epilogue. It notes that "the decision would seem to legally preclude" states from declaring the tomato their state fruit. Even a law student could tell you that the holding of Nix is almost certainly limited to the Tariff Act of 1883. The Supreme Court does not announce by fiat that the tomato is a vegetable for all legal purposes (let alone the federalism implications of doing that for state law), only that for the purposes of the Tariff Act of 1883, a tomato will be taxed like a vegetable. If the epilogue is supposed to be ironic and not serious, that irony is lost on this law student. It is however, a bit of a shame. The truly "great" cases are not just great only for their reasoning but typically for the beautiful language that so perfectly embodies the great principles of the law and justice. For example in first amendment law, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith" or "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric". Additionally, while most of the selections are still relevant today, there are a few selections that try to conceive of laws as similar to those that govern nature. Almost no one seriously thinks that the physical laws of nature are analogous to legal structures after Hume. Perhaps I'm nit-picking, I am after-all a law student first and foremost.

New York Times Review/Television; The Twilight of 'America's Century’ By WALTER GOODMAN NOV. 27, 1989

''America's Century,'' Lewis H. Lapham's dour and dire view of the decline of American power and confidence over the last 100 years, comes to its gloomy conclusion with a litany of events that have shaken the nation's sense of itself.
With the support of a few like-minded journalists and think-tankists, Mr. Lapham probes traumas like the loss of the war in Vietnam, the economic competition from Japan and West Germany, the Iranian hostage crisis, the killing of United States marines by terrorists in Lebanon and the Iran-contra revelations. He arrives at a diagnosis of terminal malaise.
The six-part series, is as close to a personal essay as television has given. Mr. Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine, sees American history in this century as a compound of pretensions to power, affectations of ideology, and a naive idealism about the workings of the world and the motives and interests of the United States itself. And so the nation has plunged from triumph to disarray.
The last hour is given to the Presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and Mr. Lapham and his cohort really give it to them. Mr. Carter is presented, not without sympathy, as a feckless leader, altogether out of his depth in Washington. Even as he was trying to incorporate ideals of human rights into foreign policy, he is shown toasting the Shah of Iran: ''We don't fear the future when we have friends like this great country.'' The Administration, by this account, was totally unprepared for the advent of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Mr. Carter's response to the taking of American hostages in 1979 is written off as ''weak, indecisive, sentimental.''
The treatment of Mr. Carter is kindness itself compared with the treatment of Mr. Reagan, who is credited here with having accomplished the ''Hollywoodization of politics.'' Mr. Lapham, who can seem supercilious even when he means to be pleasant, lets loose his scorn for the former President for upholding ''the sanctity of myth against the heresy of fact.'' He is blunter about Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, whom he calls ''a treacherous and lying agent of the national security state.''

It is that state, represented most formidably by the Pentagon, that Mr. Lapham and most of his guests, who are not very helpfully identified but speak mainly from the left, see as the Great Satan. President Eisenhower's warning against the power of the military-industrial complex is hauled out as a prophecy come true. The Pentagon and the defense industry are pictured as clinging to past threats and future profits, while present threats and opportunities go unmet. Instead of working with other nations to safeguard the environment and help the impoverished, Washington, in the Laphamian view, is frozen in its obsession with military power.
At the very end, Mr. Lapham, who delivers his messages while strolling among international sites and sights like a figure out of Henry James, turns slightly upbeat, offering the possibility that the hopes of the American people will prevail over the ambitions of the American state. Given all that has gone before, this seems like pro forma condescension toward the People. It runs smack against the strong current of the series.

But you don't have to buy Mr. Lapham's entire stock of goods to be stimulated by this effort to provoke thought, concern, debate. And whatever one's reservations about the quality of the history offered by ''America's Century'' and the opinions advanced with such assurance, at the very least - and it is not so little - they are phrased with an elegance not common to television.

Lapham's Quarterly is a compelling read. Each issue draws in a wide range of historical and contemporary voices on a particular subject. This issue, Fall 2014, is all about Time.

Up to my eyeballs in research for a book about literature, time, and history, I had already read a number of the segments published in this edition (like Hesiod, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Veblen, Mumford, Thoreau, Aristotle, Boethius, Kant, Lucretius, Nietzsche). But I discovered plenty of new 'leads' along the way that I am now exploring.

Several of the more recent contributing authors were especially thought-provoking: Max McClelland's piece about working in an Amazon-type shipping warehouse (2012) and E. C. Osondu's reflections on life in a present day refugee camp (2004) were especially hard hitting.

Issues of Lapham's Quarterly are beautifully designed works of art--including a lot of great art as well as writing. This is some mighty fine curation.

Okay, I love the concept - a collection of primary sources around a given topic - but I do not love that, while the topic on the cover is Religion, the first fifty pages are all explanations of why religion is the worst. I've started dreading trying to read this, so instead I'm giving up.

Al Barna gave me this as a birthday present - amazing periodical!!!

Brief and disappointing. The author went to India when the Beatles did (in 1967) and wrote a magazine article about it, then apparently he wrote this book about those few weeks a number of years later. He was watching the Beatles from afar, not really "with" them. The author doesn't provide any historical context, which would have been much more interesting.

As always, lots of good stuff, some very very good, but if you are a read-every-page person like I am, there are also some pretty boring parts. Overall, I'm still determining if this is worth the time it takes to read--but after finishing an issue, I do feel a little smarter. :-)½

This is my first issue of Lapham's Quarterly, and my feelings are mixed. It certainly is intellectual, which I find appealing. Some of the quotes and short pieces are very satisfying. On the other hand, it perhaps isn't surprising that the Comedy issue is not so much about making you laugh as it is about studying what comedy is--or at least what writers through the centuries have conceived it to be. There are lots of juxtapositions of those who don't appreciate comedy at all and think it a base human instinct versus those who understand that it is an essential part of human nature that helps to make life bearable.

This issue provided satisfying reading during my lunch hours, and I mostly look forward to the next one, which has already arrived. But whether or not this becomes a permanent reading habit is still to be determined. (I did download and listen to some of the Lapham's Quarterly podcasts, by the way, and most were excellent.½

Includes an article by M.F.K. Fisher, on pp. 155-6, titled "Life Cycle". The article is an excerpt from
Fisher's essay "Love and Death Among the Molluscs" from her 1941 book Consider the Oyster.

Includes article by M.F.K. Fisher on pp. 176-6 entitled "M.F.K. Fisher on the Basics".
It is an excerpt from Fisher's essay "U is for Universal" in her 1949 book
An Alphabet for Gourmets on the topic of salt.

In an accidental way the disjointed arrangement of LQ fits well the topic of this issue, dream-like as it is reading across time and space about people high on various substances. My favorite pieces include an excerpt from Andy Wharhol's POPism describing his NY crash pad where famous artists hung out and partied stoned at all hours. I have yet to read the famous The Bell Jar but the excerpt here of two girls picked up in a soda shop was a discovery of fine writing. A disturbing excerpt from Methland about a dealer who burns his house down while cooking meth than burns his skin off in sheets while trying to save his drugs, unable to feel the pain (till later). Anne Roiphe in Art and Madness writes about the night she talked Doc Humes (founder of The Paris Review) down from a bad trip. Art Pepper in Straight Life: The Story of Art Pepper gives an account of what it's really like detoxing from opiates while isolated in a jail cell, unable to sleep or eat for weeks.

Essays of note in this edition include: Bohumil Hrabal from I Served the King of England describes a fish wrapped in a turkey wrapped in an antelope wrapped in a camel, a meal for 300 at the Hotel Paris. In a selection from Petronius' Satyricon the cook is reprimanded for not gutting a pig before cooking it, but all is not as it appears.. many other excellent pieces stuffed into this edition.½

A mostly interesting collection of excerpts, anecdotes, images, and charts on the themes of work and idleness, from Egypt circa 1160 BCE to 1844 Paris and 21st c. Minnesota. The writers and artists represented include Pliny the Elder, Charles Mingus, Machiavelli, Chekhov, Rabelais, Gloria Steinem, Mark Twain, Roberta Victor, Ôyama Shirô, Olaudah Equiano, Pieter Bruegel, Miguel Rio Banco, & Doris Ulman. The range of voices, vocations, and localities reveals the multiplicity of values and meanings ascribed to human labor and leisure since ancient times, with something for everyone.

I also had personal reasons to be suspicious of tool collecting. Although I come from a family of insufferably handy men—men able to wire a house, rebuild a transmission, frame a wall without calling an expert or consulting a book—I am profoundly unhandy. By the traditional measures of American manhood, I am, essentially, a Frenchwoman. (Donovan Hohn, “Lost Symbols”)

Lagunitas Censored Copper Ale
Tröegs Sunshine Pils

I enjoyed Lines of Work. The editors pick of excerpts and quotes contrast the universal themes of the need for work and labor, versus the desire for leisure and idleness. The pictures were very good too, Jean-Francois Millet's The Sower is my favorite.

Favorite excerpts include: Norman MacLean's experiences as a lumberjack before the era of chainsaws, he was on the other end of a 2-person saw with a sadistic jack whose "pace was set to kill me off." An excerpt of Homer's seven year tryst with Calypso in The Odyssey, "they lost themselves with love," but Homer leaves to return home to his wife. Nebmare-nakht in 1160 BC Egypt gives advice for young men, "Love writing, shun dancing." Roberta Victor in a piece from Studs Terkel's Working (1974) tells her experiences as a high-price call girl in Manhattan, "You leave and go back.. to what? To an emptiness. You got all this money in your pocket and nobody to care about."

Susan Orlean writes about the King of the African Ashanti tribe who lives in a small Bronx apartment with a throne, "Everyone always has a problem for the King." Edwin Lefevre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923) is "a font of investing wisdom" according to Alan Greenspan and considered a classic about stock trading. Paula Speck's essay "Six Seconds" is about families who sue for damages when their loved ones experience foreknowledge before dieing, such as in a plane accident or falling off a building; court precedent values each second of "I'm about to die" horror at about $3,000/sec, on average. "Where a medieval man might have been grateful for a chance to pray, we sue." Leslie Chang's excerpt from Factory Girls (2008) is about a Chinese factory that makes most of the worlds running shoes is a fascinating glimpse of mass industry and the social life within its walls. Woodie Guthrie's lyrics "Lulow Massacre" is a moving tribute to a real event in 1914, the deadliest strike in the history of the United States.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2011 cc-by-nd

The subject of "Celebrity" is of universal timeless appeal. We all desire immortality and fame is the modern way to go about it. The wisdom about doing so in these pages is as inconsistent and varied as the human mind, yet like vanity, it's a mirror of others looking back onto ourselves. Montague was the first to write down his inner thoughts, he coined the term "essay", coincidentally around the same time as the Reformation when the old Christian ideas of immortality were being destroyed and replaced by the secular idea of celebrity. Today with the Internet - Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, blogs - we are all famous, it's the modern religion.

As usual this issue contains many thought provoking excerpts from great authors, beautiful images, witty quotes, insightful info-graphics and pithy biographies - not to mention 5 or 6 original essays by scholars and authors, it's a generous and fun magazine worth saving next to the classic books. Some of my favorite excerpts include David Samules "Shooting Britany" (2008) about the evolving paparazzi scene in Hollywood during the 2000's, when armies of low-skilled low-paid foreigners spend weeks waiting in various spots for a possible picture of a passing star. Bob Dylan in Chronicles Vol.1 (2004) describes how he led a normal happy family life while appearing eccentric and artsy to the press and fans. Joan Didion from The White Album (1979) recounts a scene when she was with The Doors in a recording studio and offering an insight into the bands music as "love was sex and sex was death therein lay salvation". Truman Capote from "Beautiful Child" recounts a morning with Marilyn Monroe in 1955, as he accompanied her to a funeral at a chapel. Monroe's deep insecurity and vulnerability clash with her redneck background and ruthless self importance.

Frederick Treves from The Elephant Man (1923) recounts how tragically the eponymous man was abused, unable to talk or even leave his room for fear of attack in the streets of London, yet had the fame many seek. Andy Warhol from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol says the people who have the best fame are those with names on stores, like Marshal Field. Tom Rachman from The Imperfectionists (2010) says continuity and memory are illusions, our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories, which don't exist anyway because our past selves no longer exist, only our present selves, which are always dissolving away with each moment. Emily Nussbaum in "Say Everything" (2008) says every person is a celebrity today, careful managing their online image and persona like movie stars of old, but with Facebook, MySpace, blogs and, uh, book reviews. Percy Shelley's poem "Ozymandius" (1818) is fantastic romanticism.

Of the original essays, my two favorites are biographies, "Vanishing Act" by Paul Collins about the child-genius writer Barbara Follett; and an essay about the always fascinating Orson Welles called "Against Appearances" by Bruce Bawer. He counters the oft-repeated trope that Welles was a young prodigy who didn't live up to his promise, in fact he produced a large body of quality work including directed many films not commonly known about even today.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2011 cc-by-nd

"Sports & Games" is more a volume of curiosity and entertainment than deep revelation, how much depending on your interest in history and sports. The focus is on American team sports, which was disappointing as I am more into games than sports, and there were only a few articles on games, such as chess, and nothing on outdoors sports like fishing, the most popular sport in America.

Still I found some favorite excerpts, and leads to books that are now on my wishlist (linked below). An excerpt from Lord Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" about a dieing gladiator is vivid, "He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay." Roger Bannister retells the day he first broke the four-minute mile in 1954, "Those last few seconds seemed never ending." Chrétien de Troyes (12th century France) wrote some of the earliest Arthurian romances and the included excerpt from Cligès, about a mysterious knight who wins every tournament but remains anonymous, a trope would be a recurring theme in English literature. George Plimpton reports from Muhammad Ali's dressing room in 1970 in the minutes leading up to a world title fight. Sidney Poitier who stops in to offer advice on what to say in the ring, Ali responds that's "terrible man, you stick to acting and leave me the rhyming and the psyching." Henry Ford in My Life and Work, the first of his many biographies, recounts the famous car race that won him enough money to start the Ford Motor Company in 1903. American doctor Victor Heiser, in his best-selling memoir An American Doctor's Odyssey (1936), is about his experience teaching Philippine headhunters to play baseball instead of killing one another, with great success, they even learn to mimic the American slang "Slide, you son of a bitch, slide!" Commodore Matthew C. Perry in his memoir Narrative of the Expedition of An American Squadron recounts a Sumo wrestling match, "they heaved their massive forms in opposing force, body to body, with a shock that might have stunned an ox..the effect of which was barely visible in the quiver of their hanging flesh." Tacitus from Annals (2nd century AD) describes a Roman amphitheater that collapses, killing or maiming over 50,000 people.

Of the six original essays, my two favorites are by Caroline Alexander "The Great Game" about the connection between the manly culture of sport in Europe with World War I; and Beth Raymer's excerpt from her book Lay the Favorite (2010) about modern sports gambling, it looks like a great book.

Well, it's hard to read about war for long, so I took a couple of months to read this collection, dipping in for a few bits at time. A particular interest in the subject is not necessary to enjoy this collection - just an interest in history and human affairs. This is Vol. 1 No. 1 of this quarterly journal of history, and the first I've read. If the rest are of this quality (selection, variety, presentation), I'll be very happy indeed.

Read first-hand what has been written about war since the earliest writers to right now. One, two, sometimes three pages each, these essays, poems, memoirs, and accounts are interspersed with marvelous images and sidebars looking at war and the effects of war from sometimes surprising angles.

Highly recommended for anyone with a general interest in history.

Os.½

"Arts & Letters" (Spring 2010) is one the better issues of Lapham's Quarterly, up there with "War", "Eros", "Medicine" and "Learning". Anyone interested in literature, painting, music, architecture will find this mixture of classic, famous and insightful selections a real joy to read, and a guide for exploring more. This is my 10th issue of Lapham's and although not a Great Books education, it is perhaps a taste. Below are some of my favorite selections.

Leo Tolstoy from What is Art? (1898) says that art is the process of conveying ones own feelings to others so they may experience the same. T.S. Eliot explains how dead artists influence the living, but more importantly, how living artists change how the dead are perceived. Vitruvious from On Architecture (25BC) says that manual skill and theoretical knowledge are complimentary, and in an artist, one without the other is lesser than the whole. Victor Hugo in an excerpt from Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) shows how architecture has been the writing instrument of man, each stone block a letter, each building a sentence. Stefan Zweig in The World of Yesterday (1943) remembers what it was like first learning about classic authors, rushing to the library to look up and read every new name and idea he came across.

Kurt Vonnegut gives an insightful lecture on the basic forms of storytelling. Richard Nixon and Elvis meet in a hilarious Whitehouse transcript from 1970 - Elvis volunteers to help uncover drug-using hippies. Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Spanish Dancer" (1908) is a short but hot read. George Orwell from "Politics and the English Language" (1947) famously shows how language is being subverted for political ends. Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism (1711) gives perhaps one of the most poetic and truthful skewering of art critics ever conceived, "Those half-learned witlings, as numerous in our isle / As half-formed insects on the banks of the Nile."

Zadie Smith in On Beauty (2005) shows what's it's like to be a naive but devoted freshman in college, at once learning new things while old myths are destroyed. Andy Warhol from POPism (1980) remembers when he first became famous. Lee Quinones recalls spray painting subway cars in NYC in the 1970s. Ovid, from Metamorphoses (5AD), tells the story of Pygmalion. Maxim Gorky recalls seeing his first moving picture in 1896, "It darts like an arrow straight toward you - watch out!"

Of the four original essays, my favorite is by Jamie James called "In The Gloom The Gold", a short biography of Ezra Pound. Imagine running into this character, even today: "He would wear trousers of green billiard cloth, a pink coat, a blue shirt, a tie handpainted by a Japanese friend, an immense sombrero, a flaming beard cut to a point, and a single, large blue earing."

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2010 cc-by-nd