The New Criterion is among the finest literary journals published today (I would say the finest, but since it has published two of my pieces, I might be accused of bias). Founded by the late Hilton Kramer, it is currently published by Roger Kimball.
Reading The New Criterion is like spending an hour or so in conversation with the most thoughtful interlocutors in the most congenial intellectual salon. It is a place where serious thoughts are carefully expressed, without the common demand among contemporary media that every problem be offered a solution, many of which turn out to be impracticable or repetitive. Rather, what TNC does so very well is to allow one the leisure of actually thinking. I confess I read less of its excellent monthly reviews of music and the arts, but only because I am so unaware of what is current. If I could publish with them every month, I would happily do so (that desire to be taken as an example of my high regard for the journal, not a plea).
The January issue ran essays from a symposium entitled, "The corruption of our political institutions," held jointly between TNC and London's Social Affairs Unit. Each of the essays was excellent, but the two in particular that resonated with me were Andrew C. McCarthy's "Equality above the law" and Daniel Johnson's "The dereliction of duty." Both remind us that it is our own societies that are failing to uphold civic virtue and the impartiality of law, without which we are thrown back into a world of capriciousness and brutality. I recommend both of them highly, as depressing as they are.
Johnson, by the way, is the founder and editor of Standpoint, another outstanding cultural and political magazine, whose mission is to "celebrate Western civilization." Though they may be pinpricks of light in the darkness of progressive relativism, they, along with a handful of other serious magazines, give hope that the life of the mind will not entirely be snuffed out in the West.
Reading The New Criterion is like spending an hour or so in conversation with the most thoughtful interlocutors in the most congenial intellectual salon. It is a place where serious thoughts are carefully expressed, without the common demand among contemporary media that every problem be offered a solution, many of which turn out to be impracticable or repetitive. Rather, what TNC does so very well is to allow one the leisure of actually thinking. I confess I read less of its excellent monthly reviews of music and the arts, but only because I am so unaware of what is current. If I could publish with them every month, I would happily do so (that desire to be taken as an example of my high regard for the journal, not a plea).
The January issue ran essays from a symposium entitled, "The corruption of our political institutions," held jointly between TNC and London's Social Affairs Unit. Each of the essays was excellent, but the two in particular that resonated with me were Andrew C. McCarthy's "Equality above the law" and Daniel Johnson's "The dereliction of duty." Both remind us that it is our own societies that are failing to uphold civic virtue and the impartiality of law, without which we are thrown back into a world of capriciousness and brutality. I recommend both of them highly, as depressing as they are.
Johnson, by the way, is the founder and editor of Standpoint, another outstanding cultural and political magazine, whose mission is to "celebrate Western civilization." Though they may be pinpricks of light in the darkness of progressive relativism, they, along with a handful of other serious magazines, give hope that the life of the mind will not entirely be snuffed out in the West.
No comments:
Post a Comment