Lapham's Quarterly Reaches Deal to Live On
When Lewis Lapham died last year, it appeared that his magazine might go with him.
Lapham's Quarterly, a beloved journal of history and reportage he started, had stopped putting out issues. The fate of the publication was uncertain without Mr. Lapham, a nattily dressed former editor at Harper's who seemed to personify a bygone era of magazines.
But Mr. Lapham's magazine will live on, though under a much different owner. Bard College, a private liberal arts institution in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., is acquiring it at no cost from the American Agora Foundation, the nonprofit that had published the magazine.
'This will benefit all our students,' said Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College. 'To understand how it's possible to talk intelligently, without jargon, without the worst of self-referential academic prose, about important ideas and important controversies and complexities, which we seem not to tolerate today.'
Lapham's Quarterly, which was founded in 2007, is something of an oddity, even for the quirky magazine business. Each issue connects a broad, sweeping theme — 'Night,' for example, or 'Happiness' — to current events thorough long-form articles and excerpts from historical texts by writers like Shakespeare. Mr. Lapham had already written the preamble to the latest issue, focused on energy, when he died in July at age 89.
Bard College plans to publish that issue in print and has others in development, with the titles 'Islands' and 'Folly.' It's still unclear whether Bard will continue Lapham's Quarterly on its regular print schedule after that. The magazine will be operated by the Hannah Arendt Center, a politics and humanities institution founded by the scholar Roger Berkowitz.
One of the most valuable assets owned by the foundation, the list of 17,500 paying subscribers to Lapham's Quarterly, will also pass to Bard, said Paul Morris, the magazine's publisher and executive editor. It is unclear whether any of the 18 or so staff members furloughed when the magazine went on hiatus last year will be hired back. The American Agora Foundation will dissolve.
Before he died, Mr. Lapham blessed the transaction with Bard on a call with Mr. Morris. But it took months for Bard to vet copyright issues, said Mr. Morris, who added that his only regret was that Mr. Lapham wasn't around to see the magazine pass into safe hands.
'It's my great lament that he couldn't be here for this conversation,' Mr. Morris said, 'because I know he'd be echoing everything that's been said and adding his own flavor to it.'
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Some evangelicals might feel the book mocks their faith, while atheists might think the book overlooks the shortcomings of religious groups. Both those criticisms would be fair, he said. Religious groups get a lot of things wrong, and yet churches and other faith groups remain important to their members. Morris said he tried to walk a fine line of gently poking fun at faith while showing why it still has an impact on people's lives, and how the friendships made in youth groups may long endure. 'I didn't want the humor to be like, church is stupid, or say, 'look at this dumb church stuff,'' he said. 'I wanted it to be funny and familiar.' Morris said he wanted to capture the mixed feelings people have about the faiths in which they grew up. While he appreciated Bible teachings like caring for the needy, some of the politics and social messages, especially about LGBTQ+ folks, were a turnoff, he said. Religion, he said, is complicated. 'There are a lot of wonderful memories, and there's a lot of stuff that gives me the ick,' he said. 'I hope that's in the book. I hope you can see how a religious upbringing can be upsetting and wonderful — comforting but also makes you mad.'
