Lapham's Quarterly: Youth

by Lewis H. Lapham

Lapham's Quarterly 2014 Issue on Youth

Genres: Nonfiction, History

221 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Lewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.

Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/

Reviews

[Johnrh · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a history journal.
It’s a philosophy journal.
It’s a history-of-philosophy-of-history journal.
It’s a chronicle of human existence.

L.Q. describes itself much better than I:
“Lapham’s Quarterly is a journal of literature and history, edited by Lewis Lapham.  Four times a year we collect fiction, non-fiction, poems, and essays from over four thousand years of recorded time, all gathered around a single theme.”
My standard L.Q. comments apply:
1. ‘Lapham’s Quarterly is the finest publication I read.’
2. ‘In L.Q. I am exposed to great minds without having to read the complete works of each.’

I’ve embarked on a long-term project to read all issues of L.Q. It just started publishing in 2008.

Lewis Lapham’s preamble this issue is Fortune’s Child.  As usual he is autobiographical as well as insightful.  His foibles of youth are amusing and informative.  He does not shy from his heritage of a successful, industrious family who did well in leather, oil, and shipping.

“The text that speaks most loudly to our present circumstance in modern-day
America dates from around the time of the birth of Christ-the placing by the
Roman poet, Ovid (Tomir, page 27), of the beautiful shepherd boy Narcissus beside
a pool of water that serves him as a mirror in which he sees his own eyes reflected
as “a pair of stars worthy of Bacchus,/ a head of hair that might adorn Apollo.” Not
knowing that it is “he that he himself desires,” the boy falls in love with “a shadow
that he wrongly takes for substance.” So does our cherished national identity rest
on preferring the shadow for the substance, on the belief that to be American is by
definition to be young and capable of wonders, exceptional, innovative, beautiful,
fearless, pure of heart. All societies in all time zones (mythical, historical, and
geographical) worship at the altar of youth, but none so fervently as in the land of
the free and the home of the brave.” (p. 16)

Further in this preamble:
“Over the last sixty years our politicians and credit-card syndicates have undertaken to foster the belief that all Americans are by definition rich kids, deserving everything and anything that it occurs to them to want—entitlements and subsidies and tax exemptions, guns and butter and movie stars…” (p. 19)

Hmm.  Can we foist responsibility onto politicians and credit-card companies?  Sixty years would be from 1954 onward.  Without verifying economic statistics I believe the ’50s continued the post-WWII surge in production and consumption of housing, automobiles and all associated.  Was there something wrong with that?  I say that producers drive consumption, not politicians and card companies.

The decay of modern and American civilization is a common lamentation with Mr. Lapham. A common attitude he frequently seems to display in his preambles is cynicism.  Is nothing good to be found in the world today?  I won’t argue that today’s industrialized ‘civilization’ dearly loves to consume to the point of eyes-glazed rapture with all that glitters with the pretense of gold and wealth.  I like my ‘stuff’ too.  That isn’t solely the realm of European-American western civ either but seems to apply to well-developed areas on any continent.  When do our selves take any responsibility for our state of being?

“The ancient poets say that youth’s a stuff will not endure. Our American dream machines say otherwise—youth’s the stuff that lasts forever, and fortunately we’re rich enough and smart enough to make it so. The adorable images paraded across the mirrors of the self-glorifying media are the shadows that Narcissus wrongly took for substance. They serve to cloud the not-so-lovely truth that lies about us in our body politic—16 million children caged in poverty, most of them short on food and medicine, 21 percent of Americans in their twenties unemployed, another forty thousand of similar age in prison, 37 million young people burdened with an aggregate debt of $1 trillion in student loans, two million teenagers attempting suicide each year.” (p.21)

Yes.  Where are the politicians when you really need them?  Just WHO IS minding the store?  All I know, or hear at least, is it’s Bush’s fault.

Some of my favorite authors this issue are Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Joan Didion, Plutarch on Lycurgus from Parallel Lives, and Donna Tartt.

See my multiple posts with comments and extensive extracts on YOUTH here:
http://fairplay740.wordpress.com/?s=Q...

[Prima Seadiva · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Yard sale find, worth the $2 I paid.
As usual with Lapham's, an interesting compilation of writings by various authors and illustrations by various artists about a subject. Not a format I would read straight through but that is part of the pleasure with it.
This issue had some interesting items but was not as fully engrossing to me as the Food issue.

I'm not young anymore. I tried to read with both my recollections of youth as well as from the present perspective of old age. It seemed like most of the selections were written by older people.

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quote from pg 44 "If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things." Norman Douglas 1916. Maybe I should give "Youth" four stars. I read it through quickly which normally means I loved it. But this issue had too many philosophical and sexual articles for my taste.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Lapham's Quarterly. Perusing it's pages it's hard to deny that "there is nothing new under the sun". A fascinating exploration of youth from across times and cultures.

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this. The best publication I've read in decades. A copy was given to me by the printer, and I've ordered several other back issues. Can't wait to dig in!

[Servando Patlan]

Very entertaining mixture or literature and art.