A Matter of Opinion

A MATTER OF OPINION

BY VICTOR S. NAVASKY FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX 2005, 458 PAGES, $27.00

The circulation figures for all the journals of opinion published in the U.S. combined would not equal the readership of People magazine. Yet, The New Republic, National Review, Weekly Standard, In These Times, The Progressive, The Texas Observer, and other opinionated periodicals of the left, right, and center exert a disproportionate influence on American politics and culture, even as most remain perpetually on the precipice of bankruptcy. According to Victor S. Navasky, publisher of The Nation, the oldest continuously published American weekly, there must be a lesson in why a few of these survive while hundreds of commercial operations with larger budgets and reader bases have come and gone.

In his book, he offers rambling thoughts about his own life, the life of The Nation, and the critical role that journals of opinion play in sustaining the health of the public sphere. "I am a practicing ideologist publishing an ideological magazine," admits Navasky, who mistrusts writers who pretend not to be guided by a core body of beliefs. Navasky served as editor of The Nation from 1978-94 and has since been serving as its publisher. He identifies the fundamental purpose of the magazine as "Protest against injustice, protest against the despoliation of the world's resources, protest against the arbitrary exercise of power, protest against prejudice and discrimination, protest on behalf of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, protest on behalf of those who don't read us.... "

Moreover, he protests against the consolidation of media under the control of a half-dozen powerful corporations, noting that the vitality of The Nation--which flaunts its homeliness ("It's probably the only magazine in the country if you make a Xerox of it, the Xerox looks a lot better than the originalS' quipped contributor Calvin Trillin)--repudiates the profit motive as the chief explanation for human endeavor. Much of Navasky's book recounts his persistent efforts to round up financial support for a magazine that has run a deficit almost every year of its existence. He relishes the independence of a publication whose editors have hired and fired its publishers and insisted that neither investors nor advertisers exert any influence over content.

Founded in 1865, in the aftermath of Abolitionism, The Nation has had a tumultuous history that includes some of the earliest reports on the Holocaust and on the dangers of tobacco as well as fierce opposition to McCarthyism. During his own tenure, Navasky recalls controversies over unauthorized publication of excerpts from Gerald Ford's memoirs, reconsideration of whether Alger Hiss perjured himself when he testified that he was not a Communist, and concerning coverage of the war in Iraq. He offers profiles of notable Nation contributors such as Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Kopkind, I.E Stone, Ralph Nader, Gore Vidal, David Levine, and Edward Sorel. Lest anyone believe that the magazine enforces a monolithic party line, he recounts acrimonious disagreements within its pages and its offices over crucial matters of war and peace.

Navasky traces his preparation for running The Nation to Swarthmore College and then Yale Law School, where he edited a satirical magazine called Monocle. After a stint at The New York Times Magazine, he published a study of Robert Kennedy's career as attorney general, Kennedy Justice, and another of the 1950s Red scare, Naming Names. However, Navasky's abiding passion clearly is The Nation, though he admires other journals of opinion--even of opinion with which he disagrees--and offers eloquent testimony to their continuing importance, even (and especially) in an era of accelerated news coverage. He insists that the advent of the blogosphere does not render vetted, printed, assembled essays obsolete. Navasky shares his thoughts on the role that postal rates, advertising, and for-profit status have played in the dramatic history of these singularly unprofitable publications. He quotes the first sentence of the first issue of The Nation, dated July 6, 1865, "The week has been singularly barren of exciting events," to underscore the truth that a culture thrives less on events than ideas.

Reviewed by STEVEN G. KELLMAN Literary Scene Editor

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