Lewis H. Lapham
Lewis H. Lapham
Lewis Henry Laphamis an American writer. He was the editor of the American monthly Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly, a quarterly publication about history and literature, and has written numerous books on politics and current affairs...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
Date of Birth8 January 1935
CountryUnited States of America
war forever news
Wars might come and go, but the seven o'clock news lives forever.
song garden delight
In the garden of tabloid delight, there is always a clean towel and another song.
self way mazes
I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.
country childhood return
Recollections of early childhood bear comparison to fairy tales, and ... youth remains an unknown country to whose bourn no traveler returns except as the agent of a foreign power.
lovely looks stories
Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure.
fun cereal games
The days of my youth I remember as nearly always in need of explanation, and not as much fun as advertised in the promotions for board games and breakfast cereal.
broken pieces thousand
Power broken into a thousand pieces can be hidden and disowned.
opportunity done united-states
Given lesser opportunities, Kissinger would have done very well as a talk show host. Fortunately for him, although not so fortunately for the United States, he found his patron in Nelson Rockefeller instead of William Paley.
common-purpose people wish
What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text?
emptiness states very-good
The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.
death lying home
About the presence of death and dying I don't remember the society in the 1950s being so skittish as it has since become. People still died at home, among relatives and friends, often in the care of a family physician. Death was still to be seen sitting in the parlor, hanging in a butcher shop, sometimes lying in the street.
country ignorance rivers
[For American consumer society], the country's reserves of ignorance constitute a natural resource as precious as the Mississippi River or the long-lost herds of buffalo.
years years-ago stories
History is not what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago; it's a story about what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago.
flames voice greek
It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame.