There are dozens of little intellectual journals that publish three or four times a year and are meant for a small, but non-specialized audience: I’m talking about The Yale Review, The Drift, The Baffler, The Believer, Liberties, and The Point, for example.
1) New blurb unlocked!!!! "With Phil Christman you're always in good hands." Thank you, seriously.
2) I'm obviously deeply biased. I love Hedgehog. The first several essays of mine that anyone gave a shit about all were published there (and, specifically, were all commissioned by B.D.M.). They've let me say things the way I want to say them, mostly, and they give me a harder time in copyediting than anyone else does. In every issue I read articles that are a) good and b) hard to imagine getting published anywhere else without changes that would make those articles boring. Basically, that's all I ask from a magazine. As a critic, in general, I'm pretty binary: this holds my attention or it doesn't. I'm a "I fuck with this and here's why"/"I don't fuck with this and here's why" critic rather than a "Here's why this is a 5.8 rather than a 6.7 let alone an 8.9" critic. ADHD, probably.
3) I think that the overall informing vision of Hedgehog is probably something to the effect that you can rally together critics of antihumanism from the left, the center, and the right. This probably can't work as a political project. "Humanism" is too many things, and it always takes on the coloring of its surrounding assumptions. I think you can get a good magazine/a spirited book club/probably some fun parties (I'm kind of a shut-in but for those who like good parties) out of it but no energy in a consistent direction. See also Plough, which at least has the coherence of being a Christian magazine (but Christianity also is chameleonic), and which also has ... a lot of articles by a guy with the absurdly on-the-nose name Phil Christman. Plough also usually has at least one article (by someone else) that I am glad to have paid for and, speaking of parties, it throws great, if rather wholesome, parties.
In this connection, I wonder what's going to happen to the Bulwark if/when Trumpism is decisively defeated (whatever that looks like). Does it become a center-left magazine that has an unusually large number of one-time "country club Republican" readers? (That's probably good for the country, in that as a leftist I'd rather have these people huddled in a political coalition where they spend most of their energy hating what's left of Trumpism than hating Mamdani as they mostly would've ten years ago, and it's also probably good for the magazine's long-term financial stability.) Does it splinter, as the Weekly Standard did? Does it merge with Liberal Currents? Does it try to revive Mitt Romney Republicanism and promptly die, at least as a magazine? I hope it does the first thing.
4) I will say that the variety and depth of the feedback that I get from readers who don't seem to be professional writers when writing for Hedgehog is extraordinary. More cranks, more lovely and thoughtful people, more people who are a bit of both (complimentary), from more states of the Union, than I've experienced writing for any other publication, except the one time I got into Harpers. Hedgehog's doing something right when it comes to cultivating a readership.
2) I agree. I think with magazines the choice is binary. Do you subscribe or not? Right now, I do not feel an urge to subscribe to THR.
3) But is antihumanism real? It just seems like a strawman construct. Can anyone name an antihumanist? THR claims this anti humanist tendency is pervasive and is present in every institution, but I am not convinced.
I love the Bulwark! It’s just like a centrist Slate. I don’t see why they can’t keep being that way once Dems are in power.
4) this is good to know! I am glad people are reading and enjoying this journal.
I enjoyed this. There should be more reviews of journals (I've done it myself a couple of times for poetry magazines). You're right that it's very hard to work out what to read if you don't already know the journal well. Your comment about Biden made me laugh. I actually really liked the Teresa May / Jeremy Corbyn combination in the UK. I admired both of them in different ways and thought they were a pretty good balance in an old school Anglican vs Dissenter fashion. Very 18th century. But this is not a very popular view. (It was also really funny that May obviously voted against Brexit but had to try to see it through, while Corbyn obviously voted for it and had to pretend to be against it.)
I'm honestly a little shocked that a magazine edited by humans would allow the claim of Chinese "orality" to stand when China famously only could unify over written language because regional accents could render the edges of the empire incomprehensible to the inner. And that's leaving aside the quite obvious fact that, as you observed, China produced a helluva lot of abstract thought and incredibly deep philosophical exploration.
I enjoyed this, and as always it's deeply enjoyable to watch you tackle the comprehension of a new source or type of writing, sum it up, and react to it boldly. It's what makes you a great critic.
In this case, I wonder if your ultimate complaint doesn't presume a level of unified vision rare in a magazine? Even one run by a think tank with a clear mission. For a magazine to have a really unmuddled and prescriptive vision and ALSO to publish consistently well-written things is a very tall order indeed. For it to work you need either a really ideologically unified coterie of writers who also happen to all be skilled and reliable journalists, or a dictator-like central editor of the kind H.L. Mencken preferred and was (he wrote: "A magazine, like a government, is a living thing, and it must have a soul. That soul can only be the soul of a single man. If it is the soul of a committee, it is a soul that is dead."), or the magazine must create the illusion of unity by farming out topical fiefs to sub-editors or regular contributors who dictate policy on that topic (which creates apparent unity from outside despite internal disunity). Maybe every good magazine should adopt one of these patterns to be it's most incisive self, but almost always (in my experience as editorial staff on three different mags, freelance contributor to others—including Hedgehog, once, despite being personally quite far from their stated ideological orientation—and long-term reader of ~50) there are tradeoffs either in literary quality or ideological coherence. All of which is just to say: maybe your critique is right, but if we adopt "unmuddled aims" as the standard of excellence for little magazines, the vast majority won't make the cut.
As I'm typing this, though, I'm asking myself why am I acting so defensive of little magazines? What's wrong with high standards like the one you endorse here? High standards are good. So never mind. But still, I pecked this all out on my phone and even went and dug through my notes for a specific goddamn quotation, so I'm clicking post, lol.
You’re probably right. Right now I am reading The Drift, which has very strong coherent aims, but the result also feels unsatisfying. I think I just want each journal to have a product that they know is good, that they are willing to stand behind. With the drift, that product is their fiction. But I felt like Hedgehog didn’t really have any articles they had put a lot of time into, which they really believed in.
"It is so frustrating to read pages and pages of these critiques of other people, but there’s no sense of how the author would actually do it differently."
Agreed. But isn't that largely the point of writing those kinds of critiques? That we're hoping someone else will get off their ass and do it for us?
An especially frustrating part of the pattern is that when new projects do arise, when someone has gotten up to work, the interest in the new projects is very limited between launch and success: there's a deep valley of death.
"Their ambiguous, indecipherable approach is probably necessary for their own long-term stability."
Is this nostalgic conservatism the political equivalent of the old Cosmo "last 10 pounds" and "five sex positions that will drive him wild?" Vague aspirations that keep the buyers coming because they sound good and like something they should do? Except you can't sell those five sex positions as long as you can sell politics because at some point your back gives out...
Well, Naomi, I haven't read this post yet, but I'm taking advantage of the comments box to note that your book arrived yesterday - and I was so excited that I put aside William James (one of the gods) for you!
That college town essay is fabulous, thanks for directing me to it. I'm also in the process of trying to decide what literary journal (or journals?) I'd like to regularly give my money to, so this is a really well-timed project for me. Looking forward to more!
I dig this project, excited to read along! If you happen to catch the newest edition of The Drift, you’ll find me in the Letters to the Editor section at the back 👋
Oh, and I also was shocked by how many things the Biden Admin did that were good and unexpected. I have to regard him as a failure, since the 2024 election went the way it did, and Gaza is unforgivable, but if I'm comparing him *to Presidents* I find him really hard to hate. Least bad of my lifetime, for sure.
1) New blurb unlocked!!!! "With Phil Christman you're always in good hands." Thank you, seriously.
2) I'm obviously deeply biased. I love Hedgehog. The first several essays of mine that anyone gave a shit about all were published there (and, specifically, were all commissioned by B.D.M.). They've let me say things the way I want to say them, mostly, and they give me a harder time in copyediting than anyone else does. In every issue I read articles that are a) good and b) hard to imagine getting published anywhere else without changes that would make those articles boring. Basically, that's all I ask from a magazine. As a critic, in general, I'm pretty binary: this holds my attention or it doesn't. I'm a "I fuck with this and here's why"/"I don't fuck with this and here's why" critic rather than a "Here's why this is a 5.8 rather than a 6.7 let alone an 8.9" critic. ADHD, probably.
3) I think that the overall informing vision of Hedgehog is probably something to the effect that you can rally together critics of antihumanism from the left, the center, and the right. This probably can't work as a political project. "Humanism" is too many things, and it always takes on the coloring of its surrounding assumptions. I think you can get a good magazine/a spirited book club/probably some fun parties (I'm kind of a shut-in but for those who like good parties) out of it but no energy in a consistent direction. See also Plough, which at least has the coherence of being a Christian magazine (but Christianity also is chameleonic), and which also has ... a lot of articles by a guy with the absurdly on-the-nose name Phil Christman. Plough also usually has at least one article (by someone else) that I am glad to have paid for and, speaking of parties, it throws great, if rather wholesome, parties.
In this connection, I wonder what's going to happen to the Bulwark if/when Trumpism is decisively defeated (whatever that looks like). Does it become a center-left magazine that has an unusually large number of one-time "country club Republican" readers? (That's probably good for the country, in that as a leftist I'd rather have these people huddled in a political coalition where they spend most of their energy hating what's left of Trumpism than hating Mamdani as they mostly would've ten years ago, and it's also probably good for the magazine's long-term financial stability.) Does it splinter, as the Weekly Standard did? Does it merge with Liberal Currents? Does it try to revive Mitt Romney Republicanism and promptly die, at least as a magazine? I hope it does the first thing.
4) I will say that the variety and depth of the feedback that I get from readers who don't seem to be professional writers when writing for Hedgehog is extraordinary. More cranks, more lovely and thoughtful people, more people who are a bit of both (complimentary), from more states of the Union, than I've experienced writing for any other publication, except the one time I got into Harpers. Hedgehog's doing something right when it comes to cultivating a readership.
1) You’re welcome! What you do for them is great.
2) I agree. I think with magazines the choice is binary. Do you subscribe or not? Right now, I do not feel an urge to subscribe to THR.
3) But is antihumanism real? It just seems like a strawman construct. Can anyone name an antihumanist? THR claims this anti humanist tendency is pervasive and is present in every institution, but I am not convinced.
I love the Bulwark! It’s just like a centrist Slate. I don’t see why they can’t keep being that way once Dems are in power.
4) this is good to know! I am glad people are reading and enjoying this journal.
I enjoyed this. There should be more reviews of journals (I've done it myself a couple of times for poetry magazines). You're right that it's very hard to work out what to read if you don't already know the journal well. Your comment about Biden made me laugh. I actually really liked the Teresa May / Jeremy Corbyn combination in the UK. I admired both of them in different ways and thought they were a pretty good balance in an old school Anglican vs Dissenter fashion. Very 18th century. But this is not a very popular view. (It was also really funny that May obviously voted against Brexit but had to try to see it through, while Corbyn obviously voted for it and had to pretend to be against it.)
I'm honestly a little shocked that a magazine edited by humans would allow the claim of Chinese "orality" to stand when China famously only could unify over written language because regional accents could render the edges of the empire incomprehensible to the inner. And that's leaving aside the quite obvious fact that, as you observed, China produced a helluva lot of abstract thought and incredibly deep philosophical exploration.
I enjoyed this, and as always it's deeply enjoyable to watch you tackle the comprehension of a new source or type of writing, sum it up, and react to it boldly. It's what makes you a great critic.
In this case, I wonder if your ultimate complaint doesn't presume a level of unified vision rare in a magazine? Even one run by a think tank with a clear mission. For a magazine to have a really unmuddled and prescriptive vision and ALSO to publish consistently well-written things is a very tall order indeed. For it to work you need either a really ideologically unified coterie of writers who also happen to all be skilled and reliable journalists, or a dictator-like central editor of the kind H.L. Mencken preferred and was (he wrote: "A magazine, like a government, is a living thing, and it must have a soul. That soul can only be the soul of a single man. If it is the soul of a committee, it is a soul that is dead."), or the magazine must create the illusion of unity by farming out topical fiefs to sub-editors or regular contributors who dictate policy on that topic (which creates apparent unity from outside despite internal disunity). Maybe every good magazine should adopt one of these patterns to be it's most incisive self, but almost always (in my experience as editorial staff on three different mags, freelance contributor to others—including Hedgehog, once, despite being personally quite far from their stated ideological orientation—and long-term reader of ~50) there are tradeoffs either in literary quality or ideological coherence. All of which is just to say: maybe your critique is right, but if we adopt "unmuddled aims" as the standard of excellence for little magazines, the vast majority won't make the cut.
As I'm typing this, though, I'm asking myself why am I acting so defensive of little magazines? What's wrong with high standards like the one you endorse here? High standards are good. So never mind. But still, I pecked this all out on my phone and even went and dug through my notes for a specific goddamn quotation, so I'm clicking post, lol.
Thanks for the essay!
You’re probably right. Right now I am reading The Drift, which has very strong coherent aims, but the result also feels unsatisfying. I think I just want each journal to have a product that they know is good, that they are willing to stand behind. With the drift, that product is their fiction. But I felt like Hedgehog didn’t really have any articles they had put a lot of time into, which they really believed in.
"It is so frustrating to read pages and pages of these critiques of other people, but there’s no sense of how the author would actually do it differently."
Agreed. But isn't that largely the point of writing those kinds of critiques? That we're hoping someone else will get off their ass and do it for us?
An especially frustrating part of the pattern is that when new projects do arise, when someone has gotten up to work, the interest in the new projects is very limited between launch and success: there's a deep valley of death.
"Their ambiguous, indecipherable approach is probably necessary for their own long-term stability."
Is this nostalgic conservatism the political equivalent of the old Cosmo "last 10 pounds" and "five sex positions that will drive him wild?" Vague aspirations that keep the buyers coming because they sound good and like something they should do? Except you can't sell those five sex positions as long as you can sell politics because at some point your back gives out...
I loved this. You are the best.
Well, Naomi, I haven't read this post yet, but I'm taking advantage of the comments box to note that your book arrived yesterday - and I was so excited that I put aside William James (one of the gods) for you!
That college town essay is fabulous, thanks for directing me to it. I'm also in the process of trying to decide what literary journal (or journals?) I'd like to regularly give my money to, so this is a really well-timed project for me. Looking forward to more!
I dig this project, excited to read along! If you happen to catch the newest edition of The Drift, you’ll find me in the Letters to the Editor section at the back 👋
Oh, and I also was shocked by how many things the Biden Admin did that were good and unexpected. I have to regard him as a failure, since the 2024 election went the way it did, and Gaza is unforgivable, but if I'm comparing him *to Presidents* I find him really hard to hate. Least bad of my lifetime, for sure.