Periodical table

Rifling through the magazine rack.

Here is an unusual fact about me: I edit print magazines.¹ It is far and away the best job I have ever had, not least because it gives me a reason to buy and read magazines, activities I have long loved.²

The magazine is an underrated format. They are like charcuterie boards—an assemblage of tempting morsels, a meal you eat as a snack. You don’t have to “finish” one to enjoy it; you take what you want, however you like. In books, authors are the sun at the center of the universe, but in magazines, light shines from more than one star. Asteroids can rocket by. The editorial vision is there at the center, but it is shared and brought into being by many minds and hands, and it can change.

Making a magazine feels a little like staging a play—everything depends on the particular assemblage of collaborators and the alchemy of transmuting what starts as a creative cacophony into something choral and coherent. There are hard limits, including deadlines and budgets, but there is also room for interpretation and collaboration and accidents and improvisation. There is a framework for interaction between editors and writers and designers that (when it works) somehow makes everyone better than they could ever be on their own. And, unlike a book, as soon as a magazine is finished, it is ready to be remade again, elastic to changes in time and voice and design. This is one of the things I love most about them. That, and the pictures, of course.

Here are a few gems in my magazine rack:

FLAIR: March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and December 1950, ed. Fleur Cowles. The first time we spoke, Anja Charbonneau (founder, editor-in-chief, and creative director of everything Broccoli) asked me if I had ever seen FLAIR, Fleur Cowles’ short-lived, legendary magazine. I had not, but when I looked it up online, I was enthralled. This summer, I finally started piecing my own collection together and can report that FLAIR is even more wonderful in person. Each issue has a theme—for example, May 1950 was the rose, and its pages were scented like roses. I keep huffing my copy, hoping to catch the smell of ghost roses. Each issue has extravagant, winsome details like gold ink and silver paper, mini-book inserts, fold-out spreads, absolutely irresistible peek-a-boo cutouts (think tiny windows that open to reveal the rooms within), plus a veritable bonanza of batty old ads. Everyone from Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali to Ernest Hemingway and Gypsy Rose Lee wrote for FLAIR; Saul Steinberg’s cartooned ready-mades star in an inset booklet. Rose-scented pages and fancy bylines did not come cheap, though; each issue printed lost $.75 cents, which is millions in today’s money, which is why it lasted just one year, even though it was an absolute sensation at the time.

I plan to read through these slowly, with clean dry careful hands.

FMR, English edition Vol. V, No. 21, August/September 1986, ed. Franco Maria Ricci: It’s a good thing I was sitting on the floor when I started paging through FMR, because I might have fallen right down. As an object, the magazine, dedicated to capturing “the ageless splendor of beautiful perishing things,” is striking–the text is set in classical typeface (Bodoni was a passion of Franco Maria Ricci’s), and there is spread after spread of richly detailed photographs and art reproductions framed by inky, glossy black, conjuring the effect of a spotlight. This particular issue includes features on Lalique (with an essay by Colette), Donatello (paired with an excerpt of Vasari), Thonet (commentary by Adolf Loos), and the amazingly detailed miniature cities 17th and 18th century war strategists used to plot sieges. FMR is another discovery I owe to Anja, and the more I learn about it, the more my mind melts. It was the passion project of Ricci, who titled it with his initials—read aloud, it’s “éphémère.” FMR was printed in French, German, English, and Italian, and Susan Sontag, Umberto Eco, and Octavio Paz are all listed as advisors in my copy. The whole undertaking seems wildly expensive, completely improbable, and marvelous; even the ads are ridiculously gorgeous. Apparently, Ricci was such good friends with Borges that he promised to build him a massive maze, which opened in 2015. He seems almost like a character out of a dream (or Borges story). This is a snippet from the editor’s letter:

My friends sometimes ask me how, issue after issue, I choose subjects for FMR. It is not easy to answer. Sometimes an exhibition, a restoration, or a new discovery suggests the magazine’s content. At other times it suddenly seems very urgent to present a theme I have been thinking about for years. It is as if an unexpected breeze pushes me in a certain direction, and I cannot help but comply with it.

FMR ran from 1982 to 2009 and relaunched in 2022. I’m eager to see a new issue and begin hoarding back issues.

THE FLORAL OBSERVER, Spring 2024, ed. Rachel Hays/Taxonomy Press: When I saw this nature-themed, risograph-printed newspaper in person at the Seattle Art Book Fair, I was immediately charmed. It recalled the paper blizzard of hyperlocal newsletters, church circulars, school mimeographs, community broadsheets, and advertising placemats that drifted through ordinary life in my formative years. The Spring 2024 issue includes a bird-themed crossword, garden fails and wins, instructions on scattering seed, a story on trilliums, a letter from the editor, lists of nature sightings, and a classifieds back page.

FOR SCALE: PRINT ISSUE, ed. FOR SCALE: The bracingly opinionated and dauntingly smart design newsletter has ventured into the print wilds via an appealing broadsheet format (think big, satisfyingly rustle-y newsprint pages that act as effective camouflage for emotionally damaged, shabbily dressed ‘70s-era private investigators hired to eavesdrop on reckless adulterous women). Like a scuzzy gumshoe, one of my favorite pastimes is listening to other peoples’ heated and revealing conversations, which is what reading FOR SCALE feels like to me, a design-world naif. The advertisements, all labeled “THIS IS AN ADVERT” in big, screaming banners, are an especial joy.

THE LOWBROW READER OF LOWBROW COMEDY, ISSUE 13, ed. Jay Ruttenberg: I picked up this pocket-sized publication at The City Reader in Portland despite a Jesse Eisenberg byline (I find his humor writing a little hardy-har-har) because there is an intriguing essay on Maurice Sendak, an interview with Joan Rivers, and a cartoon about Elaine May.

Take heed: The no-bra look is in for corpses.

MILDEW, Volumes 1 and 2, ed. Ellen Freeman: Ellen has one of the most curious and inspiring minds I’ve ever encountered, which is probably why MILDEW, her magazine about second-hand fashion, is such a good read. This bit from her editor’s letter for vol. 2 captures some of what makes it so special:

What does interaction without transaction feel like? What does it mean to share freely? Secondhand fashion exists in the zone between what’s mine and yours. In Mildew, we talk about conventional secondhand shops, but we’re also interested in exploring alternative economies and fluid ideas of ownership. … [Y]ou’ll find articles about secondhand clothing, but also secondhand culture: crowd-sourced nostalgia, one country borrowing a soap opera from another, migrants connecting their histories through textiles, hybrid garments and identities, and a shop selling nothing but memories.

That is a shop I’d like to visit.

SLIGHTLY FOXED, THE REAL READER’S QUARTERLY, NO. 82, SUMMER 2024, eds. Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood: Scaled like a paperback, this is thoughtfully made journal full of thoughtful people writing thoughtful things, mostly about the books they love.

VESTOJ, ISSUE NO. 10, Autumn 2021, ed. Anja Aronowsky Cronberg: I came across this intriguingly brainy fashion journal a few years ago at C’H’C’M. I misread the subheading and sub-subheading as one statement: “THE JOURNAL OF SARTORIAL MATTERS ON DOUBT.” The prospect thrilled me, and I was a little disappointed to realize that doubt was not a recurring theme (doubt is definitely a recurring theme for me). I keep coming back to Mary Wang’s essay on impending motherhood, Candace Opper’s essay on 1990s-era suburban mall fashion, and Renate Strauss’s archive of fashion doubt. There’s more I have yet to read, including a short story by Kate Chopin. (Reprints and excerpts are the funkier cheeses on the magazine charcuterie board; I love them, which is why I found Lapham’s Quarterly so irresistible—I hope the print edition comes back.)

WORLD OF INTERIORS, JUNE 2024, ISSUE 500, ed. Emily Tobin: Everyone needs one (relatively) easy-to-find print media treat, and WOI is mine. Reading it is akin to eating marzipan—delectable and best savored slowly, in small bites. If I lived the sort of life where I had my own light-filled library filled with rare treasures, I’d make room for Min Hogg-edited back issues of WOI because they are stuffed with beautiful things to look at, and the sort of casually erudite writing that makes me wish I read Ancient Greek and knew off-hand the ins-and-outs of various 18th-century porcelain manufactory practices.

I could keep going, but that’s more than enough from me. For more magazine takes, meet me in the comments : )

Me, barricaded in a fortress of old newsprint, reading.

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Currently reading:

HONEY FROM A WEED by Patience Gray.

Bookmarked:

FIELD GUIDE TO THE PATCHY ANTHROPOCENE.

Blogged:

Summer trend report + rose-garden tourism; odds and ends 6.21.24.

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Images:

A woman reaches for a copy of Life on a New York City newsstand in 1936. Time Inc. Picture Collection / The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images.

FLAIR magazine covers and a spread from the May 1950 “Rose” issue, via Open Culture.

FMR No. 21.

MILDEW Issue 2 table of contents.

Anthony Angel (Angelo Rizzuto), “Woman reading inside newsstand,” 1953-56. Library of Congress.

1. My singular career path: First, I studied subjects hiring managers consider useless (specifically: theater and classics). Next, I spent years being rejected from hundreds of jobs and pieced together a wild, disconnected series of soul-stunting gigs, including janitor, landscaper, cancer center file clerk, theater ticket-taker, child support enforcement agency temp, telemarketer (lasted one day), second grade teaching assistant, part-time librarian, front-desk concierge, holiday bookstore help, high school theater set designer, law office jack-of-all-trades, cocktail bar schmoozer, “newsroom” editor (i.e, proofreader), sculptor’s admin assistant, t-shirt illustrator, Etsy shopkeeper, ghostwriter for a beauty, luxury, and fashion copywriter, architecture intern, blog editor/social media manager, and “consultant,” that usefully nebulous catch-all. (Forget murder clowns and pantsless public speaking; job-hunting is my nightmare.) Then, out-of-the-bluest blue, I got an email with the subject line “Editor for a new magazine.” This led to a phone call where I explained at some length why I was not the right person to hire. I got the job, and have been part of a team that makes magazines and books ever since.

2. My life in magazines:

CHILDHOOD: HIGHLIGHTS (anodyne and inescapable for visitors to pediatricians’ in the 1980s), RANGER RICK, 321 CONTACT, DYNAMITE, MAD (I relished the waft of subversion, even if I didn’t fully get it). STONE SOUP and CRICKET were too wholesome and teacher-approved, but spent I hours and hours with my parents’ copies of THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOG. Seemingly endless yellow-spined copies of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. PLEASANT COMPANY and J. PETERMAN catalogs were formative.

TEENS: Eschewed TEEN BEAT and TIGER BEAT; loved SASSY. Dutifully read the major music magazines (ROLLING STONE, SPIN, NME), inescapable glossies (COSMOPOLITAN, VOGUE, SEVENTEEN, ELLE, MADEMOISELLE, GLAMOUR), and ubiquitous middle-class coffee-table standbys (TV GUIDE, READER’S DIGEST, PEOPLE, TIME, and NEWSWEEK). Horror-read WOMAN’S WORLD and LADIES HOME JOURNAL at my grandma’s house, all fad diet advice and “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” columns; the rotating thrills of tabloid headlines at the grocery-store check-out. Ascendency of MARTHA STEWART LIVING, pierogi-loving New Jerseyan; the discovery of HARPER’S. Many nameless zines I wished I had saved, plus the ARCHIE MCPHEE catalog.

TWENTIES: Read to be an informed citizen (THE NEW YORKER, HARPER’S, THE ECONOMIST) and consumer (LUCKY, DOMINO, DWELL, and BLUEPRINT, a short-lived Martha Stewart production; I kept every copy). I briefly subscribe to FOREIGN AFFAIRS, and when I am feeling flush, pick up BOOKFORUM, ARTFORUM, BOMB, INTERVIEW, THE UTNE READER, TIN HOUSE, and GRANTA. Ruth Reichl’s GOURMET. Was never hip enough for TIMOTHY MCSWEENEY’S QUARTERLY CONCERN or THE BELIEVER.

THIRTIES: Living in New York, I start reading NEW YORK. Increasingly obsessed with reviews (THE NEW YORK REVIEW; THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS). The KINFOLK era commences. Read THE PARIS REVIEW for the interviews; start paying attention to N+1 and THE BAFFLER. Captivated by the visual worlds of SELVEDGE, WORLD OF INTERIORS, and APARTAMENTO. Entranced by CABINET. Skeptical of MONOCLE. I enjoy GARDEN & GUN and DOWN EAST and hoard copies of LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY. Amid the continuing collapse and death-knelling of print, I begin working as the editor of a print magazine.

PRESENT: HARPER’S, THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, and THE NEW YORK REVIEW for love; THE ATLANTIC and THE NEW YORKER for duty. My pack-rat era commences: I buy back issues of magazines wherever I can scavenge them and whatever looks interesting at actual newsstands.