[lbo-talk] The Suicide of New Left Review

[Michael Dawson]

> I let my sub to NLR lapse shortly after Perry Anderson took it over.
> (Robin Blackburn refused to do a sub trade with LBO, unlike Jim Grant
> of Grant's Interest Rate Observer; maybe he thought it was too ugly.
> In any case, I had a paid sub for over 20 years.) I didn't like his
> political line, and thought the first few issues under his editorship
> were disappointing - and I thought under Blackburn's editorship it
> was pretty excellent most of the time. So I don't know what's become
> of it in recent years. What do other people think?
> 
> Doug

I haven't been able to even read it in several years.  My personal
hypothesis is that the editors think way too much of themselves, so see the
thing as some kind of world-historic theory journal now.  The level of
abstraction is stratospheric, yet, to my eye, the thinking is pretty damned
stale.  If you're going to stay in the eagle's aerie, you'd better have new
things you're noticing.  Instead, I usually see recent NLR pieces as
something akin to the newspaper translated into post-leftist jargon.  "Are
we experiencing a transition from hegemony to dominance?"  That's a Big Idea
from this last issue.  Zzzzzz...

Personally, I also find the quality of NLR has about a .9 positive
correlation with its degree of association with Fredric Jameson.  The more
often they publish his stuff, the worse the whole thing gets.  He's a pretty
good thermometer of decline, IMHO.

It's kind of funny that they'd turn down the sub trade.  I don't miss NLR in
my mailbox, ever.