Awful. And here I thought the New Republic website redesign was as bad as it gets -- but even it isn't moving around all over the place.

I hate web sites that re-arrange themselves while I'm trying to look at them. So that top picture sliding around is very off-putting to me--even worse, it takes up most of the screen on my monitor, which is a lot wider than tall. Other than that, it's ok. I'm trying to allow for the fact that my usual first reaction to a major web redesign is to not like it, although I will never like the sliding graphic. It's funny because I had recently been reading them more. I want to read that piece on Pynchon.

They've trashed their old comments and now require disqus registration, so I guess I'm done.

The publication has been suffering for about a decade. I can look at the print edition at my local library, but you riffle through it and you think "what's the point"?

Some time ago, Fr. Neuhaus offered that if there came a point where it appeared First Things had 'finished a course of life', he hoped the publication would shut down. Sadly, the time has come.

All three individuals who have held the editors' chair over the last 10 years have been inadequate to the task for one reason or another (one was a fraud, one a profligate buffoon, and one mush meets tapioca). The current editor commissions and publishes articles which are stupefyingly boring, puts juveniles of dubious judgment in charge of moderating the blog comment sections, and allocates inordinate space to a weirdly narrow constituency within Christian congregations: people who describe themselves as religiously orthodox but insist on making a public point of their sexual disorders. There is a stable of such people on the contributors' list at First Things and their moderators protect them to some degree from criticism.

I think Mills lives in Pittsburgh and telecommutes. His bylined contributions are satisfactory, though he does not have Fr. Neuhaus' wit.

I would prefer that scarce foundation dollars be directed to Crisis, The Latin Mass, New Oxford Review, Touchstone, Ignatius Press, and other apostolates which have not failed.

I would not say 'looney fringe'. Dale Vree seemed at times to assume the worst about what people had to say and grew overly invested in certain contentions and arguments. An example of the former would be his critiques of Stratford Caldicott, &c. and of the latter would be the multi-part Michael Rose show.

Rose received some friendly criticism from certain quarters (Amy Welborn, Fr. Rob Johansen, Brian St. Paul) the burden of which was that while his general argument was true, some of his accounts were dated, some of his witnesses were not disinterested, and some of the specific charges were bum raps. The reaction of Rose and Vree was neuralgic and unnecessarily so.

Still, that was a while ago. It is true I have not looked at the magazine for over a year. I believe Dale Vree has retired in favor of his son.

My suspicion about First Things is that it is a vehicle only one person knew how to drive. Recall Peter Drucker's dictum: "if a job has defeated two or three men in succession, the job is undoable and should be abolished". Even leaving aside the dishonorable Damon Linker, James Neuchterlein certain sounded spent at the time of his valedictory in 2004, Joseph Bottum it turns out was interested in imaginative literature and not much else (and could not stay under budget), and R.R. Reno is a theological academic with the vices of the breed. Stick a fork in it. It's done.

Time will tell whether the rest of the world agrees with you.

Dale Vree often seemed to be eager to pick a fight where it wasn't really warranted. I used to review books for them occasionally, and besides the fact that I don't really like to do formal book reviews, there were some things appearing in the mag that I wasn't keen to be associated with. At this distance in time (10+ years) I don't remember any specifics.

Yes, I guess that MA is just as "academic" as FT, but that I'm more interested in the majority of MA's subject matter, which makes it seem more interesting to me.

By the way, Gerald Russello has done a good job with turning The University Bookman from a print journal to an on-line one. It's updated at least weekly with new reviews and essays, and he also posts pieces from old issues that contemporary readers probably have not seen.

Mills' Linkedin entry puts him in Pittsburgh.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-mills/b/758/2a0

I believe that David may still own his house in Pittsburgh, but his primary residence is NYC. He'll be visiting the 'Burgh next weekend, where he and I and some other friends will be watching the Super Bowl at Patrick's Pub, our old traditional Sunday night watering hole.

Yes, an idea man you are not.

I am interested in policy and institutional forms and in social dynamics. Some people invest a great deal of time into the study of the cogitations people had at one point or another. That's a vector influencing developments. I tend to doubt it is a very potent vector.

There are people who fancy you can understand working political societies by reading Thomas Jefferson's correspondence. I think if you read Thomas Jefferson's correspondence, you learn something about...Thomas Jefferson.

OK, there's more going on here in Pittsburgh than I thought :)

Junior Fellows is their technical term (I just looked it up on the fb page of one of our former students!)

I use a laptop and usually bump up the page view setting a bit. Just pushed it down for the First Things site and now it's much easier to read. So I take back by first "awful" comment. Still don't like those moving things, though. ;)

And that Alone in America article is terrific, especially the part about the need to "acknowledge and enter into each other’s sufferings."

FT is the only print mag that we get (apart from medical journals). Funny, but I've never thought of it as particularly academic. These days, I admit, I only make time to read the book reviews, David B. Hart's column, and perhaps one or two articles. But I just renewed my subscription, so I must still like it well enough.

I'd never heard of any of the three Rob G subscribes to!

That's funny, Mac. I felt much the same when I had a subscription to New Criterion. It wasn't so much the articles as the columns: all those New York concerts and plays! I would read it, salivating and feeling sorry for myself. At some point I said, "Why am I doing this?" 8-)

The Sewanee Review is an academic literary journal published by a liberal arts college in Tennessee. Much of Flannery O'Connor's short fiction first saw print in that journal.

Forgot about Intercollegiate Review. I think it had a brief moment in the sun in the 1950s and has been abiding but quite obscure since. There was also Salisbury Review from the same publisher, I believe. ISI also published The Chesterton Review which was an issue of a division of Seton Hall University. Some of what is in that is worth a read. I think that would be my first choice among their serial fare. Most of the monographs they vend are from their inventory or are re-issues of old titles. They only issue about 3 or 4 new titles per year.

In addition to the academic articles, there was at one time some satisfactory commentary and book reviews in First Things. Fr. Neuhaus had a monthly feature which consisted of about thirty or so paragraph long commentaries, mostly apercus from what he had read in the newspaper. David Mills writes that now. It's a tough act to follow.

It was one of the big names in literary periodicals when I was a student 40+ years ago. I was a little surprised to hear you mention it so favorably. I figured it had faded into some combination of mediocrity and academic leftism long ago.

I subscribed to the Chesterton Review for a number of years. It's definitely worth reading. The reason I dropped it is that I never seemed to actually get around to doing so.

Fr. Neuhaus's ramble was one of the things I consistently enjoyed in FT. They put it on their web site and I used to go there and read it and nothing else.

I'm surprised it's still going strong too. I read lots of articles from it for my PhD

I said that about my web site at first, too. I had a little note there saying "This is not a blog" and explaining that I wasn't going to have a blog, because it would be too time-consuming. [snort]

Yes, same Nordlinger, but no, I didn't see the Helprin piece. Eventually I'll get to one of Helprin's books.

Which reminds me: I'm pretty sure you're one of the people who recommended Magnolia (the movie) to me. Saw it this weekend. Very fine.

That was me! (who recommended Magnolia) Maybe Rob G too; I don't remember.

It has been quite a long time since you said you'd take a look at it. I had begun to fear that you'd seen it, hated it, and were keeping quiet to avoid giving offence. I'm glad to hear that you thought it worthwhile. In my opinion it's the best thing PT Anderson has done -- though I think that is a minority view.

Or I should say: I must have discussed it with *someone* recently.

Maybe he didn't want to look like he was getting on a bandwagon, but once it was online it was pretty much the same thing as a blog.

Yes, very crude and unpleasant at times, but I would argue that those aspects find their place within an overall moral framework that is basically sound. I'm really glad that you liked it.

I love the energy and abandon of the film: the way the storylines are always spilling into one another, the blurring of the distinction between the "real-world" sounds and the soundtrack, and, of course, the audacity of the big setpiece that is the key to the whole affair. His subsequent films have grown progressively more controlled and refined; I know several cinephiles who think he has become the great working director in the process, but personally I prefer what he was doing before.

I haven't written about Magnolia, I don't think. It's such a sprawling, multi-faceted film that I hardly know where to begin.

One magazine which I have subscribed to which is very enjoyable is Slightly Foxed. It's full of reading suggestions.

Yes. I would have thought an Anglophile would love it! I have discovered all kinds of poets and novelists I did not know about from reading it - and it also has very good short stories.

Hmm, they only give prices in pounds & Euros...how's that going to work? I guess I can find out by trying.

Thought it was something like that.