A natural experiment proves me right. Sort of.

I have commented elsewhere on the decline in quality of writing in magazines to which I used to subscribe. Decline in both literary quality as well as cognitive breadth. There is just not as much to get one's neuron's firing as in the past it seems to me. Too much that is opinion poorly expressed and too many articles that are narrowed by their ideological convictions.

I still take The American Scholar. They have not been immune. They had several weak editors after the retirement of the incomparable Joseph Epstein. Too much on literary theory, social justice, academic faddism, etc. The most recent editor seems to be trying to claw his way back to a magazine which might appeal to an intelligent middle class reading public. Not there yet, but making progress.

I catch myself wondering whether I have this view because there really has been a decline in the writing and editorship or whether it simply reflects an advancement into fuddy duddness. I cannot rule that out as a plausible hypothesis.

I have been on a year long book diet, forced to read from among the thousands of accumulated and unread books sitting in boxes in the cellar and to clear out the towering stacks in my office and around the house. I have gone even further, discarding books I am actually unlikely to ever read in order to make room.

I mock myself for the anguish of letting go of Mid-Twentieth Century Economic Development in the Caribbean but know that it is the right thing to do.

This past weekend, while going through a box of books, I came across a couple of 1985 editions of the The American Scholar. It is a great natural experiment to test my hypothesis (declining quality or incipient fuddy duddiness?).

The edition is at random. What are the articles?

From Summer of 1985, for my reading delectation we have:

An Author's Mail by Barbara Tuchman

Cricket and Beyond by Jervis Anderson

Visits to a Morgue by Heinz R. Kuehn

Understanding Lebanon by Leila Fawaz

The Losers World Was II by James D. Wilkinson

Behind the Blue Pencil by Jacques Barzun

Public Lending Right by William B. Goodman

The Mary Elinore Smith Poetry Prize by Anne-Ruth Ediger Baehr

Woof - I'll read anything by Tuchman and Barzun. There are two home runs right there.

Lebanon, WWII from the view of the losers, a visit to the morgue - I'd give any one of those a read, anticipating it to be interesting.

Public Lending Right - What that? Oh, it is an article about the practice among a dozen countries in terms of how authors are compensated when books are read from a library. That is interesting on several levels; I would read that.

Cricket and Beyond - Something about cricket in the 1950s in Jamaica. Looks like it could be interesting.

The Poetry Prize? Well, maybe or maybe not. I love poetry, but not all poetry.

That's a pretty compelling collection of reading. In fact, I kept the magazine out of the storage box in order to read some of the articles.

OK, how about the most recent American Scholar?

Moral Courage and the Civil War by Elizabeth D. Samet
Monuments ask us to look at the past, but how they do it exposes crucial aspects of the present and has an inescapable effect on the future

Reflections on a Silent Soldier by Robin Kirk
After the television cameras went away, a North Carolina city debated the future of its toppled Confederate statue

New World Prophecy by Joseph Horowitz
Dvořák once predicted that American classical music would be rooted in the black vernacular. Why, then, has the field remained so white?

The Crisis of University Research by Richard Drake
Academia’s pursuit of corporate and government dollars has undermined its commitment to learning

Required Reading by Anne P. Beatty
Sometimes teachers need to reach beyond the canon

How I Learned to Talk by Emily Fox Gordon
Conversation once offered entry into other people’s minds. Has that disappeared?

OK. Hmmm. Perhaps it is my recalcitrant mind but I am seeing:

An invitation to consider our own racism.

An invitation to consider our own racism.

Racism in music.

Academia associated with business is sinful. (This has nothing to do with the failure to replicate which is what I suspected the article would be. And which would have been interesting.)

Quit reading your cultural classics you xenophobe.

Talking about therapy.

Desiccated, anemic, self-regarding, ideologically circumscribed, insulting, and narrow-minded. OK. I think I am pretty comfortable that this brings the judgment down on the side of "The writing is worse and the articles aren't interesting." What is there in here that would speak to an accomplished, middle-class, responsible person with a wide range of interests. This is pretty much garden variety social justice tinged drooling which can be found in every money-losing magazine now.

It is a pretty informal natural experiment with a small sample size and no methodological rigor. But I am a man of my times. I will go with the results because I find them emotionally satisfying. I am given to understand that that is now the new standard.