Customer Reviews

American Scholar

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Sometime in 2004, I found my first issue of 'The American Scholar', and I was amazed at how fascinating such a wide ranging hodge-podge collection of essays (essays!) could be. I read it from cover to cover - alongside the reviews of literature and art and memoir, here were topics I generally had no interest in (Science, travel, medicine), written by experts for laymen, entertaining and engaging and informative. I waited for the next issue, glad of what I had discovered.

Except then I found out the editor, Anne Fadiman, was stepping down and the magazine was going in a different direction. What's worse, it was clear from the editorial that Ms. Fadiman was not happy about the situation, and hadn't really even been told *why* she was being asked to leave.

Uh-oh, I thought.

Maybe it only seems this way, but I wonder if I haven't fallen into a pattern where I catch the tail end of a wonderful era, only to witness the gradual slide toward the lowest common denominator. The new editors, as promised, began to alter the course of the magazine, slowly, or at least slowly enough so that as I subscribed for the first time (with reservations), I only noticed a few slight changes. There wasn't enough to be disappointed in - yet.

The stated purpose of the new American Scholar overlords was to bring a current event slant to the magazine, to address the issues of the day, to weigh in where weighing in by the Phi Betta Kappa society was needed - at least from the perspective of the Phi Betta Kappa society. But only a fraction of each issue would be devoted to this new penetrating analysis. The rest of the magazine would follow the successful format laid out in past years - stellar articles about any and all subjects under the sun.

What the hey, I thought, it's their magazine, they have that right - and even though the tone (which I felt had been pleasantly neutral before) sounded a little more shrill, I stuck with it. The 'Scholar' became my brother's annual Christmas gift to me, and I still enjoyed it for the most part.

But there were more changes - aesthetic mostly, but the current events slant slipped further and further to the political left, and even though I never was a fan of the Iraq War or President Bush, if I wanted to hear insightful (or incendiary) commentary regarding either one, I had Harper's magazine or Al Franken available and who could do it better anyway. And who would have thought that adding color photography to the cover (and abandoning the delightfully archaic and iconic imagery of "The Pen") would, instead of making the magazine stand out, blend it into the already brightly colored spectrum of limited shelf space?

Two more years, and two more subscriptions, went by. The 'Scholar' added fiction - to make up for 'The Atlantic' dropping theirs. (This decision never made sense to me. If 'The Atlantic' didn't find it profitable, they why would the 'Scholar'?) I did look forward to this change, but the fiction is assigned, not solicited (which, realistically, is probably how most of the bigger magazines handle it, regardless of what they say about looking for new writers), and, as I expected, reflected a stable of current, multicultural, predictable authors. No surprise discoveries here!

I thought, during 2007, the last year I carried a subscription, that the focus of the magazine was approximately half and half - split between current events and 'scholarly' articles. Additionally, the editors fell under the spell of the current trend of magazines that waste the first two or three pages with sidebar and paragraph articles, presumably to break the reader in slowly because we surely don't have the attention span necessary to dive right in. Whatever. I did not bother to ask for a renewal.

I bought the winter 2009 issue to see if the 'Scholar' had gone all the way to the bottom, or was, Helter-Skelter, trying to get back to the top of the slide. After reading it, the only thing I could think of was the phrase my son uses when he's deeply ambivelent about something. "Meh". Still about one half of the magazine concerns itself with current events, or else the subject matter, perhaps inherently neutral, seems to be infused with the author's bias, as though they are staking out a position. Regardless of the topic, it came off as stale and stifling. The other half, still refreshing and fascinating, contained the reviews of literature and art. The 'Scholar' is the only magazine that does them the way I think they should be done - one article = one in-depth review.

A note to those considering subscriptions - the stated subscription price on this site does not match the price printed inside the magazine - which is substantially lower. Substantially lower, but in my opinion, still not low enough to lure me back. I can only keep hoping the content will do that.

The first issue under the guidance of its new editorial staff showed what the PBK board must have had in mind. The magazine has adopted now a current-events bent, in place of the more insulated material that many found so appealing before. Photos are now part of the format- not good photos, or color photos, or anything like that, just waste-of-space photos. Oh yeah, in a nutshell, the pen is gone from the cover. The changes bring a once-great journal down to a level of mediocrity that results from trying to compete in a game that is not their own. I will not be renewing.

I had subscribed to the American Scholar for many years for the fine essays. I've let my subscription lapse now that the new editors have dumbed the magazine down. I can't imagine who they're trying to appeal to. The current issue's recourse to Kitty Kelly was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I don't see any place for this magazine in a world where you can subscribe to The Wilson Quarterly and The Atlantic for incisive coverage of politics and current events (not to mention book reviews), or McSweeney's for short stories and poetry, or The New Yorker for a generous weekly dose of all of the above. The book reviews are often quite good, but the other content in The American Scholar has never stood out to me.

Sometimes experimental, often lyrical. At once intellectual and emotional. The American Scholar publishes the same genres as The New Yorker and Harper's: essays, criticism, poetry, and fiction. The Scholar's essays, however, are not as slavishly tied to current events and celebrities. More frequently, they invoke liberal arts rock stars you'll remember from your college years, but in a voice that is fresh, poetic and personal...never arcane or academic. "Genome Tome" is a great example of the magazine's willingness to take risks. It is an essay in 23 parts, one for each chromosome pair on the human genome, and it is complex, technical, musical, accessible, and powerful. No wonder it won a 2006 National Magazine Award. Other favorite articles (all from the past two years or so) include: "Solitude and Leadership" (2010 National Magazine Award nominee), "Reading in the Digital Age," "They Get to Me," "Hive of Nerves," and "What Kind of a Father Am I?"

There was much discussion when the American Scholar changed editors in 2004. The first issue under the new leadership, however, continues the tradition of consistenly high quality essay writing. Contrary to what another reviewer suggests, they have not morphed this publication into a current affairs journal. While there are a couple of articles about Iraq, which might not have been there in the past, other articles include: why software doesn't make sense; why Jeremy Bernstein never finished his New Yorker portrait of Jacques Brel; moderns trends in teaching and analyzing literature; and an historical review of inagural addresses. If you like essays on off beat topics, try an issue.

The American Scholar is the magazine I've always wanted. Superb essays, superb poetry. My thanks to Anne Fadiman.