Whenever a valued and worthy publication must shutter its doors, it is time for both regret and remembrance. That day has come for the World & I, a monthly sister publication of this paper. The June issue will be the last. The May issue — a stunning one — is just hitting newsstands. (Full disclosure: I was a proud contributing editor for the Arts section of W&I for the past 10 years or so.)
The magazine is divvied up into seven parts totaling about 300 pages, bountifully illustrated in full color: Current Issues, Arts, Life, Natural Science, Culture, Book World and Currents in Modern Thought. It has been around for about 20 years.
For its penultimate issue, the cover displays the handsome, decoratively painted face of a member of the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon, alerting readers to a major feature on the tribe. Cover lines signal the 50th anniversary of the death of one of America’s most distinguished composers, Charles Ives; another half-century recollection, that of Brown v. Board of Education; and yet another: “WAVES, WAACs, and WASPs: Women in World War II.”
Among the eminently readable articles is a dandy, highly perceptive piece by Herb Greer examining why the Jacobean playwrights are enjoying a rebirth in British theater. Reflecting on a recent production of John Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi,” Mr. Greer observes how this play is typical of its age: “The story is a morally chaotic alloy of cruel political and personal deceit, sadistic torture, sexual brutality, multiple murder, hatred, revenge, madness, and betrayal. It catered to an uncannily familiar set of audience tastes at a time in British history — the early seventeenth century — when the public’s worldview shared many aspects and concerns of our own society and body politic.”
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While one magazine fades from the newsstands, another, Reason, the libertarian monthly with 40,000 subscribers, has found an ingenious way of reaching out to those subscribers with the hope of enticing more to join the readership ranks. Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie, who sought new means of focusing his readers, hit upon a major feature on databases relating to his subscribers.
The June issue will go out to subscribers carrying the subscriber’s name as a distinctive cover line, but even more appealing and alluring, the artwork will show within a round design the image of that subscriber’s home in a blown-up photo taken from a satellite shot.
The customizing of the issue for each subscriber goes even further: Ads and stories will be tailored to details revealed through the database. Declan McCullagh’s cover article, for example, tells of how that database has its positive side in providing, for instance, instant credit to computer buyers, as well as letting grocery stores stock the merchandise their customers desire.
While we’re investigating sundry advances into the future, consider the March issue of Wired. A large portion of the issue is dedicated to “Googlemania,” subheaded “The Complete Guide.” The gaggle of articles under that heading run from “Surviving IPO Fever” to “Google vs. Gates,” in which Kevin Kelleher reports: “They’re obsessed with success and each other. Call it a death match made in heaven.”
Commentary, one of this country’s better little intellectual monthlies, typically is savored for its political and historical articles, but now and again, it offers its readers some of the best short fiction to be found anywhere. The April issue gives readers a treat with a short story by John J. Clayton, “The Company You Keep,” narrated by an executive at a dot-com company who has returned in private life to attendance at the synagogue.
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May leads to June, and June means beaches and bikinis, and the lads’ and lassies’ monthly magazines are going over the top this month, indulging in sun and flesh. Leading the crop is GQ, displaying the lovely 20-year-old Czech Karolina Kurkova standing demurely against a strip of blue sea, clad in a yellow bikini bottom. Wholesome rather than blatant. The cover line, taking up almost as much space as Miss Kurkova, reads, “The Beach Issue: 250 Pages of Sun, Sand & Sex,” while the upper-right-hand corner reads, “Endless Summer: A Sizzling Portfolio by Bruce Weber.”
Going to some other kind of extreme is this month’s Glamour. It displays its share of bikinis, of course, but the cover lass is “Curvy, Proud Queen Latifah” — looking zaftig indeed in a low-cut fuchsia evening gown and diamond earrings. Two major features are “Every Size Has a Story” and “Our Love/Hate Affair With Our Bodies.” You can gather the issue’s not angled to women in size 2.
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For its May issue, the venerable Smithsonian seems to have undergone something of a new look, principally in tweaking its page layout. In the cover story, “Iran’s Lost City” (billed within as “Rocking the Cradle”), Andrew Lawler recounts how in Iran, an archaeologist is racing to uncover a literate Bronze Age society that he believes predated ancient Mesopotamia. Even his critics concede that his dig likely will change our view of the dawn of civilization. The photographs illustrating the article are, in a word, smashing.
Speaking of smashing, American Thunder, described in its recent press release as “the ultimate lifestyle publication for NASCAR enthusiasts,” is barreling right along in its third month of life. Male readers get their money’s worth with “Rusty Wallace at Full Throttle,” “Country Music 204” and “When the Corn Goes to Heaven: 8 Bourbons.”
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