“could not long survive unless it extendednits appeal beyond genteelnliterary-minded readers to those whonwere concerned about public affairs asnwell.” Wells’s decision to publishnarticles on “controversial issues,” suchnas America’s Far East policy or then”New Woman-Power in Europe,” didnwork—circulation soon doubled. Andnwhile Scribner’s, Century, The Bookman,nand Review of Reviews all foldednduring the 1930’s, Harper’s survivedn—but not as a literary magazine. Onnthe basis of “declining public interest,”nthe editors stopped serializing all butnthe biggest names in fiction—Huxley,nGreene, Maugham — during then’•/;/ llic Idle f)U timl curly ~(.”.s. I IK- C\nVirkir last llic vcslii^iul lilcriiriiic^ft of itsnurjccjiil cynicism ami hccunic airncsllynpnlilicdi. Icrvid in its alUicks nn Sixminand rcycrcniiul in its pniisc for RnhcrlnReich, the /^iT/7a/;;s, and other ew Leflnicons. People continued to buy it luriielynon the strcnuth of its ud-i und eurtonns.”n1950’s, and in the 1960’s explicitlynacknowledged that “the trend of thenMagazine is toward nonfiction.” Innthe late 1960’s, under the editorship ofnWillie Morris, fiction altogether disappearednfrom some issues of Harper’snwhile many others had only a tokennpiece by some notable such as AyinKwei-Armah or Ivan Prashker. Meanwhile,nthe magazine idolized GeorgenMcGovern, “body consciousness,”nand Gore Vidal and anathematizednRichard Nixon and nuclear power.nThe move toward the poetry of JohnnAshbery and Anne Sexton was just inntime. If a final blow was needed, itncame a year ago when Harper’s adoptedna new format described by the NewnYork Times as “breezier” and “fasterpaced.”n”We are less a magazine fornthe English teacher,” explains editornLewis Lapham. “There aren’t enoughnof them and they don’t make enoughnmoney.” As George Panichas observednrecently in Modem Age, “For readersnwho revere the critical function ofnintellectual journalism . . . the fate ofnHarper’s is especially distressing as stillnanother adulterative symptom andnportent of breakdown.”nThe Saturday Evening Post similarlynbent to the wind and abandoned itsncommitment to literature. By the earlyn42/CHRONICLES OF CULTUREn1960’s, as Otto Friedrich relates innDecline and Fall, the editors were busynfighting among themselves over whatnto say about Vietnam and whether tonput Elizabeth Taylor on the cover (innthose days some big advertisers actuallynthought Taylor was “immoral” andn”didn’t like to have their ads in thensame issue with her”). Fiction becamena useful accessory only when it fit annissue defined on non-literary termsn(e.g., some “New York fiction” wasnthought appropriate for an issue on thenNew York World’s Fair — with 11npages of color pictures). But even MissnTaylor, in living color decolletage,ncouldn’t forestall the inevitable: thenmagazine folded in 1969. Reincarnatednin 1971, the Post is now edited bynCory SerVaas, wife of a leading businessmannand community leader, andnpublished in Indianapolis. The newnversion evinces a refreshingly pro-nChristian slant, but is no longer in thenpublishing mainstream and is onlynmarginally committed to literature: interviewsnwith Crystal Gayle and PatnRobertson come first.nThe Atlantic continued to offernsome first-rate poetry through then1950’s, but—as with Harper’s—thentrend was toward articles on “ThenBalance of Military Power,” “WhatnWill India Eat Tomorrow?” and “MobnJustice and Television.” In the late 60’snand early 70’s, The New Yorker lost thenvestigial literariness of its graceful cynicismnand became earnestly political,nfervid in its attacks on Nixon andnreverential in its praise for RobertnReich, the Berrigans, and other NewnLeft icons. People confinued to buy itnlargely on the strength of its ads andncartoons. The Saturday Review of Literaturenbegan turning away from literaturenafter Norman Cousins becamenthe editor in 1939. As explained in an1957 anthology of the magazine’s bestnwork since its inception, Cousins’ editorialnpolicy was premised on the beliefnthat “the Great Depression and thengrowing threat of World War II hadnintervened between 1939 and that earlier,nperhaps happier day when purelynliterary matters had been clearly at thencenter of the responsible citizen’s concernnwith the state of his civilization.”nLiterature, the SRL editors believed,nhad been “pushed from the center tonthe periphery” and books were nown”read less because one thinks of themnnnas literature than for the sake of theirnimmediate relevance to social or politicalnor moral attitudes.” And so, insteadnof bucking these trends, the magazinenshortened its name to simply thenSaturday Review and began replacingnits articles on Gogol, Coleridge, andnCamus with discussions of American-nSoviet relations, passport policies, andnDewey’s educational philosophy. Theneditorial strategy failed anyway. After anshort venture in the early 70’s as thenSaturday Review/World, the magazinencollapsed in 1982. Resurrected inn1983 under the editorship of FranknGannon, the Review has left its literarynpast far behind. Attention to literaturenis now confined to a short book reviewnsection, while the magazine devotes itsnattention to the “aspects of the eternal”nilluminated by Dick Cavett, Tom Selleck,nand Kathleen Turner.nLooking back over the flight ofnAmerican journals from literature intonpolitics, sociology, and pop culture, ancontemporary reader may suppose—anla McLuhan—that the medium ofnlarge-scale journalism was never trulyncompatible with literary excellencenand that the advent of television madenstorytelling in print no longer feasiblenanyway. It may also be argued thatnearth-shaking economic, political, andnsocial events did make literature seemnincreasingly irrelevant. But a differentnand more fundamental perception wasnoflfered in a timely 1928 article in ThenAtlantic Monthly entitied “Why LiteraturenDeclines.” The author, RobertnLynd, concludes: “Literature begins tongo to the dogs as soon as Earth becomesnrestive and declares its independencenof Heaven. In the great ages ofnliterature. Earth was, if not a suburb ofnHeaven, a subject kingdom.” If Lyndnis correct, then, returning literaturenonce again to a place of nationalnprominence will take more than a fewneditorial meetings. It will require thatnlarge numbers of Americans again embracena sounder metaphysics than thatncelebrated in The New Yorker or ThenAtlantic. (BJC) ccn