Yuck! What the- -aw, geez, I drooled on myself again!
Written: Jan 30 '00 (Updated Mar 06 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Serious literary, political and social commentary by the best of today's writers.
Cons: Today's writers suck.
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| cowboydj's Full Review: The Atlantic Monthly Magazine Subscription |
There's a very good reason why the "Atlantic Monthly" can invariably be found in crisis centers and psychiatrists' waiting rooms across the country: it's the literary equivalent of washing down a half-dozen Quaaludes with a bottle of scotch.
Determined to finish the third of three issues I had actively ignored since subscribing, certain that intellectual nirvana was just around the bend, I instead found myself rudely awakened from a "Star Trek" dream some hours later by the unpleasant trickle of saliva down my shoulder.
Fortunately, it was my own.
Unfortunately, the subscription fee is non-refundable. I immediately stumbled to my desk and e-mailed "Atlantic Monthly" requesting a change of address. Grandma'll read it--she'll read anything--and she could really use the sleep anyway. (The woman never sleeps; it's downright creepy.)
As A.M.rapidly approaches it sesquicentennial (its first issue predated Lincoln's presidency by four years), the magazine that gave readership to political and literary luminaries the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Martin Luther King is rapidly developing a serious case of osteoporosis.
Truth is, I hate to trash this magazine. Over the last century or so, A.M. has profoundly influenced our politics and culture, regularly introducing the world to and featuring the works of world-class thinkers, never compromising its integrity for increases in circulation or advertising revenues. That it ever was, let alone still is, published in this country of anti-intellectuals is no small miracle. So, though I find it somewhat difficult to complain...
...I find it even harder to stay awake.
Maybe its just a sign of the times that writers and politicians aren't able to work us up like they used to. I mean when was the last time a presidential speech contained a line as memorable as JFK's "Ask not what your country can do..." or a writer penned a manuscript as revolutionary as Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood?"
On the other hand, who would read it anyway? The TV generation is now the Internet generation and neither has exactly encouraged the proliferation of thoughtful, literary rumination as a means to mass communication. The attention span of the average American continues to shrink in inverse proportion to the mega-hertz of Intel processor chips. In ten years, humans will need RAM upgrades just to watch re-runs of Seinfeld.
I personally believe that both are, in part, responsible for AM's current lack of lustre; so jaded are we that little is left to stir the senses. Still, it seems like AM is not even trying...intentionally, I suspect. Rather than compete with Madonna and microchips, they have opted to invalidate them by pretending they don't exist--which is really just a pretty way of saying...
...this is a freakin' b-o-r-i-n-g magazine.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
cowboydj
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Member: T Morgan
Location: Nashville, TN
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 271 members
About Me:
I laughed, I cried, I ate a cannoli.
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