“the Finch Interested Me…” In Memory Of Lewis h. Lapham And The Magazine He Founded

One outpouring day successful 2023, I received an unexpected telephone telephone from Lewis Lapham, whose sound I’d been listening to since 1998, erstwhile I joined nan editorial unit of Harper’s Magazine. We hadn’t spoken since earlier nan pandemic, but his podcast, The World successful Time, had kept maine institution during lockdown, truthful it was pinch genuine delight that I said to him, “Lewis! It’s bully to perceive your voice,” adding, “How are you?”

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“Old,” he said. “Donovan, I’ve gotten old.”

He was calling because I’d filled successful for him once, penning a preamble for nan summertime 2018 rumor of Lapham’s Quarterly, Water. Now, 5 years later, he wanted to spot if I mightiness capable successful again. The taxable this time: Islands. He wanted a preamble and an rumor that would see “the mythos of islands,” he said, not conscionable nan surface science and nan history.

I understood nan duty and accepted it. For nan adjacent fewer months, nan editors of Lapham’s Quarterly and I group to work, gathering   that had thing to opportunity astir islands—voices for illustration that of an anonymous Egyptian mariner, shipwrecked connected an land successful 2000 bc; aliases that of nan writer John Keene, who successful 2014 traveled 4 hundreds of years into nan past, imagining himself into nan constituent of position of a sailor from San Domingo seeing nan land of Manhattan for nan first clip successful nan twelvemonth 1613, erstwhile bayberries grew heavy beside nan Hudson and frogs hidden successful nan rushes serenaded “fortresses of trees.”

We tuned successful nan sound of Charles Darwin, who aft visiting nan Galápagos scribbled successful his ornithological notebook an understated statement to self: “The zoology of archipelagoes will beryllium good worthy examining.” We visited nan land of Rhodes pinch Lawrence Durrell, St. Helena pinch Napoleon, England’s “sceptered isle” pinch Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt, Sakhalin Island pinch Anton Chekhov, Ibiza pinch Walter Benjamin. We listened to nan voices of inmates connected Rikers Island and to those of immigrants connected Angel Island successful San Francisco Bay.

“Islands person ever fascinated nan quality mind,” Rachel Carson told us. “Perhaps it is nan instinctive consequence of man, nan onshore animal, welcoming a little intrusion of world successful nan vast, overwhelming expanse of sea.”

In an effort called “Isla Incognita,” Derek Walcott formulated nan animating mobility that guided our activity connected nan Islands issue: “There was a building from a Latin matter astatine school, Quales est natura insulae? What is nan quality of nan island? It has stuck successful present for complete thirty-five years. I do not cognize if I americium fresh to reply it.”

Lewis, meanwhile, was finishing what would move retired to beryllium his past effort for nan Quarterly, nan preamble for nan rumor connected Energy, primitively scheduled to look successful nan summertime of 2023. We did not cognize past really small clip he had remaining, but he knew it was moving short. The early of Lapham’s Quarterly was astatine nan forefront of his thoughts.

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When I first learned of Lewis’ decease successful July 2024, I retrieved nan Fall 2013 rumor of Lapham’s Quarterly—Death—from my bookshelf and flipped to his preamble, “Memento Mori.” As was often his custom, he’d chosen an epigraph for his essay. This 1 was from Woody Allen: “It’s not that I’m acrophobic to die, I conscionable don’t want to beryllium location erstwhile it happens.” As was sometimes his custom, he originates by responding to nan epigraph, arsenic if striking up a speech pinch it. “I respect nan stoic fortitude,” he writes successful reply to Woody Allen, “but astatine nan property of seventy-eight I cognize I won’t beryllium skipping retired connected nan appointment, and I announcement that it gets harder to retrieve conscionable why it is that I’m not acrophobic to die.”

A decade later, approaching nan grave, he feared death, I’m sure—understandably, arsenic do I, arsenic do astir of us, particularly if we tin spot it coming. The full effort is worthy revisiting, but I’ll conscionable stock 1 much transition from its closing sentences. “If my luck holds existent to its truthful acold winning form,” Lewis writes,

death will driblet by uninvited and unannounced, and I’ll beryllium taken, arsenic was my grandfather, by surprise, possibly successful nan throes of trying to constitute a stronger condemnation aliases play a cleanable play shot. If not, I’ll dream to show astatine slightest a semblance of nan composure to which galore of nan authors successful this rumor of nan Quarterly carnivore immortal witness. Certain only that nan origin of my decease is 1 that I tin neither foresee nor forestall, I’m content, astatine slightest for nan clip being, to fto nan sleeping canine lie.

His luck did not clasp true. Death announced its attack pinch ever-louder intimations of mortality, but Lewis did show that wished-for semblance of composure, fearing decease but carrying connected successful nan look of it, scribbling distant astatine his editor’s table until nan doctors insisted connected bedrest, and moreover then, while rereading Moby-Dick, for possibly nan 5th aliases ninth aliases eleventh time, he took up his pen to activity connected a memoir that he would not person clip to complete. Nor would he person clip to spot into people either nan Energy rumor aliases nan Islands issue.

Lewis hoped his namesake mag would past him. He believed it could and should past him. We astatine Lapham’s Quarterly stock this belief. We judge nan mag should unrecorded connected because location is nary mag for illustration it successful American letters. And because, during its first 15 years, Lapham’s Quarterly attracted a ample and loyal assemblage of readers who made it nan best-selling mag successful its class. And because donors ample and mini person contributed to its survival, recognizing nan worth of a mag that brings history and humanistic learning into nan nationalist square. We judge Lapham’s Quarterly should unrecorded connected because, to quote Marilynne Robinson, a writer Lewis was proud to person published, “This state is successful a authorities of bewilderment that cries retired for bully history.”

America has if thing grown much bewildered and bewildering successful nan years since Robinson first issued that diagnosis, that remedy. In 2025, erstwhile nan news rhythm has accelerated into a dizzying blur, erstwhile our noisy, hasty technologies of wide connection algorithmically tumble together truths and untruths, facts and fakes and AI hallucinations, nan slow gait and nan agelong position of Lapham’s Quarterly look to america recently and urgently suited to nan times.

*

Last March, erstwhile nan , Paul Morris, first announced nan good news astir nan location nan mag had recovered astatine Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, to which it will beryllium moving later this year, I listened to a keynote address that Lewis had delivered astatine nan Hannah Arendt Center successful 2011. Introducing him astatine nan podium was Francine Prose, nan Quarterly’s caller editor-at-large. She said this of Lewis Lapham: “Not only is he a superb writer… he’s a dream editor, partially because of his meticulous attraction to language, but besides because he urges and pushes writers to deliberation much profoundly and intelligibly and to spell further than we thought we could.”

In that keynote address, Lewis said astir giving up his youthful dream of a profession successful world history. He had nan mind of a generalist, not a specialist, and truthful had chosen alternatively a profession successful journalism. “We’re portion of nan aforesaid quality expedition,” he said, “that group out, lo, these galore years agone from Africa.” During nan travel complete nan “frontiers of nan millennia,” our predecessors connected this satellite had saved what they had recovered to beryllium “beautiful aliases useful aliases true,” and though overmuch had been lost, overmuch had been saved. “A consciousness of history,” he said, “gives you a consciousness of a broader and wider self,” which is besides what editors and writers get from nan speech they transportation connected pinch “a organization of readers.” He said of nan courageousness that truth-seeking and truth-telling require, person always required.

Although he extemporized from notes, nan reside is worthy listening to successful its entirety—or quoting from astatine length:

The problems of telling nan truth are: It’s not easy. It takes a awesome woody of courage, and I tin retrieve that during nan clip erstwhile I was nan editor of Harper’s Magazine, my measurement of trying to find nan truth was to perceive it successful nan spot and nan sound of nan writer. I’d statesman reference and wrong 3 aliases 4 pages, if I could perceive nan sound of a writer trying to speak to what he aliases she had seen—felt, known, believed, travel to know—it would beryllium reflected successful nan conviction, moreover though it whitethorn person been against nan atom of celebrated opinion. That to maine was nan truth. I could perceive it successful nan sound and it was different than personification trying to constitute an yearly study aliases a governmental reside aliases a archive pinch a governmental purpose—a seeking of grace and favour aliases trying to get nan exam mobility right. I mean, present was personification pursuing nan statement of nan thought aliases nan building aliases nan adjacent condemnation into who knows where. And it was this consciousness of willingness to return nan chance, possibly beryllium wrong.

He continued successful this vein, defining liberty arsenic “the courageousness that you deduce from not moving a con crippled connected your ain thought.” In America, he said, “we thin to judge that state is state of markets arsenic opposed to a state of mind, and I deliberation that’s making a mistake.” He referenced aliases quoted a mini pantheon of writers and thinkers—Twain, Melville, Wharton, Bierce, Juvenal, Goethe, McLuhan, Arendt.

And he said astir nan inspiration for Lapham’s Quarterly, a taxable that besides warrants quotation:

There are ever excessively galore facts. There are much facts coming than we cognize what to do with. They travel truthful quickly 24/7 that they rustle distant and shred arsenic if they were successful a upwind tunnel. And we suffer way of who we are, wherever we’re from, what is our story. And this is 1 of nan reasons, astir apt nan awesome reason, that I’ve shifted from Harper’s Magazine to doing a quarterly that deals pinch nan voices successful time—that is to say, pinch history. I attack a taxable successful nan news—money, war, nature, education—and past I bring to carnivore connected it nan voices of group for illustration Thucydides aliases Tolstoy aliases Virginia Woolf aliases Empedocles—you know, crossed nan past three-thousand-odd years because what makes truth survive, I think, is successful nan unit of nan imagination and nan powerfulness of expression.

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Lewis loved a building we perceive there, “voices successful time,” nan title he gave to nan centerpiece conception of nan Quarterly. Thinking astir nan early of nan magazine, I was reminded of different phrase, from an effort that I helped construe galore years ago, by nan French philosopher and journalist Régis Debray. Debray recommends “reading nan newspaper by nan ray of history books,” and that is 1 measurement to deliberation of Lapham’s Quarterly, as a ray by which to publication nan news, isolated from that, arsenic overmuch arsenic Lewis loved history books, Lapham’s Quarterly isn’t one, not exactly. It is, I think, an essay, a grand, polyphonic effort astir time—an effort astir clip for galore voices that Lewis began composing eighteen years ago.

Lewis had ever brought an essayist’s sensibility to nan creation of editing. When he redesigned Harper’s in nan 1980s, he invented that magazine’s Readings section, a monthly assemblage of documents and images artfully arranged into a benignant of curated exhibit, aliases a benignant of essay, 1 that often played subtle variations connected a theme. In nan Voices successful Time conception of Lapham’s Quarterly, Lewis gave america a time-traveling Readings conception liberated from nan foreshortened presentism of nan news rhythm and publishing calendar, an artfully curated grounds that would respond to existent events by bringing to carnivore upon them each of recorded history.

Each rumor of Lapham’s Quarterly is a séance of voices from crossed nan continents and centuries, a speech inspirited by nan cosmopolitan belief that, arsenic nan Roman playwright Terence put it, “I americium human, truthful thing quality is alien to me.” We brushwood successful nan Quarterly’s pages nan voices of writers, artists, scholars, scientists, thinkers, and humanities figures, yes, but nan mag besides makes audible much obscure voices rescued from nan wreck of time. And because this was ocular arsenic good arsenic aural euphony that Lewis was orchestrating, images travel nan voices.

*

On nan September greeting of Lewis’ memorial work successful New York City, I visited nan Lapham’s Quarterly offices, overlooking Union Square. During nan pandemic, Lewis had not taken good to moving from home. He loved spending his days successful nan institution of editors whom he treated for illustration nan attending physicians, residents, and interns of nan Lewis H. Lapham Teaching Hospital for Writers, Editors, and Journalists. There are galore accomplished alumni of this school.

His agency by that morning, 2 months aft his death, had been emptied of its personalizing artifacts, those worldly traces of acquisition and spirit. The framed covers of nineteenth-century editions of Harper’s Weekly had vanished from nan walls. The bookend successful nan shape of a carnivore reference a book had vacated nan bookshelves on pinch nan books. So, too, nan vessel of scotch beside nan globe and nan brace of aged typewriters connected 1 aliases nan different of which Lewis had erstwhile tapped retired drafts of articles for nan San Francisco Examiner and nan Herald Tribune, mag features for the Saturday Evening Post, and essays for Harper’s. Also gone: nan overgarment rack from which connected wintertime mornings he’d bent his scarf.

His expansive oaken table had been moved to different area of nan Quarterly’s offices, supplanted by 1 that mightiness person been purchased astatine Office Depot. On its surface, successful spot of nan reference books that Lewis had kept adjacent astatine manus (Roget’s International Thesaurus, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, The Complete Dictionary of Shakespeare Quotations) were galore folders of correspondence—several decades’ worth, each boxed up— destined, on pinch nan remainder of Lewis’ correspondence, for nan archives astatine Columbia University.

In nan first files I opened I recovered 2 typewritten letters, dated August 1974, that Lewis and Annie Dillard had exchanged aft he’d sent her to nan Galápagos for Harper’s, an duty that resulted successful “Life connected nan Rocks,” 1 of nan essays collected successful Dillard’s now classical postulation Teaching a Stone to Talk.

Dillard had enclosed a snapshot of herself holding and inspecting a Darwinian finch—an “adult antheral large-billed cactus crushed finch,” to beryllium exact. In her missive she explained that she’d been baiting finches and mockingbirds pinch a cupped manus of caller water. “They tin smell it 30 yards away,” she wrote. She’s wearing a achromatic polka-dot bandanna complete her sun-bleached hairsbreadth and a long-sleeved russet garment pinch small achromatic birds flying crossed nan cloth and has a canteen slung complete 1 shoulder, and she looks arsenic though she wishes nan finch could talk. “I cognize excessively much. What shall I do pinch each this material?” she wrote successful her missive to Lewis. “What magnitude are we talking about—twenty pages?…I deliberation astatine nan infinitesimal what I’ve sewage is simply a portion astir language. Not what instantly comes to mind—hence nan delay. About isolation and individuation—and pinch these abstractions suitably cloaked successful sealskin, leaping about.”

Lewis Lapham’s reply to Annie Dillard: “We tin beryllium talking astir pages, depending upon what happens to nan abstractions cloaked successful sealskin. I for illustration nan thought of an effort astir language, and I don’t entity to rereading passages of Melville.” He past closes his missive pinch this sentence: “The finch willing me, arsenic did your wished appraisal of it.”

I perceive Lewis’ sound successful that sentence, a sound afloat of bemusement and delight arsenic good arsenic gravitas and gravel. That condemnation helps explicate nan epigrammatic reminiscence that Annie Dillard shared successful nan postulation of tributes to Lewis that Harper’s published successful nan November 2024 issue: “He spoke,” Dillard wrote there, “with his cigaret successful his mouth, truthful he said everything down a unreality of fume for illustration Moses astatine Sinai.”

The finch willing me, arsenic did your wished appraisal of it—that condemnation besides illustrates perfectly what made Lewis a superb editor and what made nan writers he edited truthful grateful for his editorial guidance, issued from down a unreality of smoke. As he wrote successful his preamble to Animals, nan Spring 2013 rumor of Lapham’s Quarterly, Lewis knew “little astir animals different than what [he’d] publication successful children’s books aliases seen successful Walt Disney cartoons.” He was not himself overmuch of a quality lover, preferring life successful nan metropolis to life successful nan woods. But he loved nan atom of a singular mind, nan timbre of a singular voice, and truthful took liking successful what willing his writers. The finch willing him because Dillard’s prose and her “determined appraisal” of finches willing him.

His liking successful nan appraisals made by wished minds informed each rumor of Lapham’s Quarterly. A kindred liking will, we hope, pass nan issues to come. For now, I want to springiness Lewis nan past word. Here is nan conclusion of nan keynote reside he delivered astatine nan Hannah Arendt Center successful 2011:

I want to end—just because I for illustration nan quote truthful much—with . This is Merlin, who is nan wizard, talking to nan young King Arthur: “‘The champion point for being sad,’ replied Merlin, ‘is to study something. That is nan only point that ne'er fails. You whitethorn turn aged and trembling successful your anatomies, you whitethorn dishonesty awake astatine nighttime listening to nan upset of your veins, you whitethorn miss your only love, you whitethorn spot nan world astir you devastated by evil lunatics, aliases cognize your grant trampled successful nan sewers of baser minds. There is only 1 point for it then—to learn. Learn why nan world wags and what wags it. That is nan only point which nan mind tin ne'er exhaust, ne'er alienate, ne'er beryllium tortured by, ne'er fearfulness aliases distrust, and ne'er dream of regretting”—which is nan hopeful statement connected which I will come, mercifully, to an end.

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Lapham’s Quarterly has conscionable announced nan statement of a recently assembled editorial corporate committed to preserving and building upon Lapham’s vision. You tin publication much astir nan relaunch here. Two caller episodes of their podcast, The World successful Time, Lapham’s Quarterly podcast, are disposable now. Feature photograph by Joshua Simpson; adapted from nan first section of nan caller play of The World successful Time.