RAGING WRITER / AGE: 71
Digital Journal — Lewis Lapham never apologizes for what he says. “I don’t toss around the word ‘impeach’ lightly,” he declares. He’s right — with his indictment to “Impeach Him” (guess who) plastered across Harper’s, it was more like a desperate call for action. His article “The Case for Impeachment” became Lapham’s parting shot in an intellectual magazine he edited for 30 years.
In one of his final articles as editor for the New York-based magazine, Lapham writes: “It is in the business of the Congress to prevent the President from doing more damage than he’s already done to the people, interests, health, well-being…of the United States.” It’s typical Lewis Lapham — blunt, courageous, frustrated, with a hint of revolution. But he’s also quick to distance himself from the far left. “The consensus has moved further to the right,” he tells Digital Journal. “These kind of statements seem bold because there are fewer of them today.”
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No matter how controversial the topic, Lapham made certain the content powered the argument. “In order to provoke political change, you need language that induces a change of heart,” he says, speaking slowly and deliberately, like a writer taking his time to select only the best words.
In this age of continuous streams of information, the potency of print has more staying power than television’s ephemeral data, Lapham adds. “Print gives you an active engagement rather than a passive acknowledgment,” he says.
So in Harper’s you’ll find cogent essays that resemble Citizen Kane — slow and dry at first, but emotionally powerful by the end. A report from the Abu Ghraib courts-martial sparks outrage, while a piece titled “The Spirit of Disobedience” resurrects the dormant activist in all of us.
And thanks to Lapham, his 1984 redesign introduced the infamous Harper’s Index, a compendium of hard-to-find statistics now imitated in countless magazine genres. He also created a digestible collection of oddities called Readings — past items have included FBI memos, notes from death row inmates and first-person stories from American cannibals.
A delicious blend of heady features and quirky short pieces led Harper’s to unprecedented success. It enjoys a circulation of 228,000 and a renewal rate of 72 per cent, a historic high. Under Lapham’s direction, the book has won 14 National Magazine Awards.
But Lapham is more than an admired editor. He’s a frequent commentator on radio and talk shows around the world, the author of 13 books and scriptwriter for the 1989 six-part documentary “America’s Century.”
Now he’s creating a whole new medium — the documentary musical. Lapham wrote The American Ruling Class, an ironic Lapham-guided adventure through America’s inner chambers of power. Lapham plays host to two Yale grads wondering if they can cut it in America’s elite society, complete with impromptu songs and a cameo by Kurt Vonnegut. “It’s doing fairly well,” Lapham says modestly.
You can’t keep a busy man down, so it’s no surprise Lapham is also planning to edit a self-titled quarterly focusing on history. Next winter, Lapham will publish a thick journal full of 50 essays centring on a single topic, such as political corruption or theatre.
Looks like he won’t be the type of retiree happy to golf his golden years away. “The secret to a long life is to continue to learn,” Lapham declares simply. “And these days, I want to learn more from Shakespeare than from Karl Rove.”
LEWIS IN CHARGE
- In Lapham’s book The Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy, he compares the Bush administration to Nazism
- Despite reaching record newsstand sales, Harper’s loses $2 million a year. A philanthropic foundation saves the magazine from capsizing
- In September 2000, Lapham’s son Andrew married Caroline Mulroney, daughter of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney
This article is part of Digital Journal’s national magazine edition. Pick up your copy of Digital Journal in bookstores across Canada and the United States! Or subscribe to Digital Journal now, and receive 8 issues for $29.95 GST ($48.95 USD)!
