"In 2005, Mr. Lapham wrote and appeared in 'The American Ruling Class,' a documentary-style film featuring fictional characters as well as interviews with real celebrities, including Bill Bradley, Walter Cronkite, Pete Seeger, Robert Altman and Barbara Ehrenreich."
Unfortunately as described it doesn't capture quite how unusual, innovative, and special this film is.
It's a "dramatic-documentary-musical." A mixture of dramatic filmmaking, documentary filmmaking, and even some elements of musical.
Its main topic/idea is to show two promising college students on graduation day, one pursuing a career of money and power (in high finance) and the other pursuing art (via writing). Lapham uses this lens to analyze all aspects of American society from a class and power direction. Mainly to show the draw of power and conformity for the college-educated elite, and the way a struggling working class subsidizes their ambitions with their labor.
In the film, Lapham himself is both a narrator and a principal, acting as a mentor to one of the two "characters," who are played by actors, but thrown into conversation with real people, including some people holding powerful positions, and some intellectual celebrities.
Ehrenreich, who had recently completed the book "Nickel and Dimed" (2001), in which she goes "undercover" as the working poor, has a role in the film, too. She "plays" the role of a worker at a restaurant, and she and the other workers, at one point, break out in song, a song titled "Nickel and Dimed." I read a review of this movie that called this scene "divine madness," and I agree.
This is one of a small collection of movies I have on DVD, because it's so small and interesting as a film, that I rewatch it from time to time. I sometimes struggle to find it on streaming networks or online. It acts as a little bit of a life decoder for me, since I grew up as a public school educated child of immigrants with not-that-much class awareness, graduated from a top college around the time the film was made, got recruited to work on Wall Street (much as the film portrays in its opening scenes), then left a Wall Street job after 3 years to co-found and work on a tech startup for many years.
Anyway, I was influenced by a lot of Lapham's work, especially his moral clarity in anti-war writing during the Iraq War years. But this one little film really stuck with me. RIP, Lewis Lapham.
Interesting. Uploaded on: 2023-11-27. I wonder if that's actually a legal upload, though. Also seems to currently be available as a $3 rental on YouTube US in SD quality:
I read Harper's Magazine for years without knowing who was behind it. The mixture of literary criticism, political analysis and in-depth reporting Lapham shaped was hard to top in terms of informativeness and calm inquisitiveness, something sorely missing from online media. The one piece of writing by Lapham that is etched into my mind is his introduction to McLuhan's Understanding Media [1], which helped me at last grasp how fundamental and unavoidable the "medium is the message" dictum is. RIP.
I first encountered Lapham in the Notebook column of Harper’s while avoiding studying in the magazine room at Uris Library. often Learned more about understanding the world from his missives than my coursework. He will be missed, the cliche of understanding the past is key to understanding the future was never more true.
A couple people (myself included) vouched for your comment. You should email the mods (contact link at the bottom) since you seem to be shadowbanned. This was probably because your first actions after creating your account was to submit a link to (your own) substack. You probably got caught by the spam filter.
As a Harper's and Lapham's Quarterly subscriber, I have been a huge fan of his quirky editorial style.
Specifically, I'd like to call out his podcast ("The World In Time"). Its past episodes remain treasure troves of wisdom, with LL's resonant voice asking the kind of engaging questions that are a rarity these days. Highly recommended.
RIP. His opening essays in Laphams Quarterly were forming for me. I have quite a few of them on my bookshelf. Thank you for your contributions to our world.
He wrote the "Notebook" column in Harper's magazine regularly for many years, and one of the very admirable things about Harper's is that the entire history of the magazine is (for subscribers) available in PDF. Here's everything Lapham published there: https://harpers.org/author/lewishlapham/
And when I say entire history, I mean back to 1850 something. It's also indexed, subject tagged and searchable. If you search the archive for "Dickens" you'll see that several of his novels were published there originally in serial form, but you'll also find random non-fiction essays he published, as well as his contemporaries writing about him. It's kind of an extraordinary resource.
Wow, I had no idea his great-grandfather was one of the founders of Texaco. I guess that's how you get the money and time to start a publication! I subscribed to Harpers and the first few years of LQ when I was in college/early-20s. I wonder how I'd like it these days, but I appreciate what it did for me in those earlier years of development.
There are probably a fair number of these smaller premium publications that have existed in no small part because they're being bankrolled by some wealthy person as, if not quite a hobby, certainly adjacent to it.
One of the editors who worked with him has started a Bookstore/Bar called Clio's in Oakland. If you're interested in picking up a copy of the quarterly in person, check it out.
Lapham’s Quarterly is great. Sad to hear about his passing. I also recall hearing that the publication would stop several months back but it seems like they’re still going?
I think a big problem we're facing is that there are competing definitions of what authoritarianism means. The Left says it's one thing, the Right says it's another. Even when politicians are confronted with the most concrete, indisputable facts on live television, they simply respond, "That's not true", and their "side", drowning in truth-averting ideology, responds with thunderous applause.
I do believe that FAFO moment is coming, but it's going to come as a surprise to the folks that distorted the definition of authoritarianism and employed it as a dishonest attack against everyone who simply disagreed with their opinion.
"Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of democracy and political plurality. It involves the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting." - Wikipedia is probably good enough here.
Both-sidesism doesn't work here. Only one side is trying to make democratic voting more difficult, and it isn't the American liberals. Only one side is arguing that the rule of law should not apply to politicians in power, and it isn't the American liberals.
You can make an argument that liberals are weaponizing social opinion, and you can completely critique liberals for a lot of things, but authoritarianism is disingenuous.
LOL - You're a case and point example of exactly what I am talking about. And bud, I never mentioned a political party -- but it sure looks like I struck a nerve somewhere with you.
But it looks like the limits of your comprehension and ability to dialogue in an objective manner have been met.
You don't have to mention one to be painfully obvious for your point.
Your argument is in bad faith and trying to be deliberately obtuse doesn't do you any favors.
Tell me, which politician said “I love you. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not going to have to vote.”?
American liberals are not above reproach in any sense of the word, but your argument about authoritarianism only applies to the Trump section of the Republican Party in America, along with the associated Christian Nationalists. Any other group is so small as not to matter.
Wrong, bubba -- and as someone who works in the legal profession, your understanding of the term "bad faith" is flawed.
What you refer to as "painfully obvious" is in reality a construct that was born, and continues to live, in your highly ideological, Leftist radicalized mind. Both sides accuse each other's candidate, every four years, of plotting to perpetually stay in power. This is a strong indication that you're not over 30-years old and again, still easily inflamed by the passion of the masses. Neither Obama, Biden, or Trump have ever had plans to become dictators.
Hopefully you mature past this ideologically-fueled phase you're in and you realize just what a political pawn you've allowed yourself to become.
Kamala just had an artist perform a song about her "fat pu#sy" and twerked on stage at her fundraising event.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the party that will restore decency in America.
I wish you the best. But you are wrong -- and blind.
Lapham: "America in 1957, I sought enlistment in the CIA and sat for an interview with a credentials committee...prepared for nothing less, I had spent the days prior to the interview reading about Lenin’s train...the width of the Fulda Gap, the depth of the Black Sea. None of the study was called for. Instead of being asked about the treaties of Brest-Litovsk or the October Revolution, I was asked...questions bearing on my social qualifications for admission into what the young men at the far end of the table clearly regarded as the best fraternity on the campus of the free world:
'When standing on the thirteenth tee at the National Golf Links in Southampton, which club does one take from the bag? On final approach under sail into Hay Harbor on Fishers Island, what is the direction (at dusk in late August) of the prevailing wind?'"
Strangely (or maybe not?), we stumbled across Lapham's Quarterly in MAKEMAKECOFFEE next to Surrey Quays station. Also their coffee is amazing, so two reasons to go out of your way :)
Edit: that was more than a year ago, though, so I'm not sure if they still carry it, but I'd hope so.
"Lapham's Quarterly was placed on an indefinite hiatus on November 3, 2023, citing "a combination of financial challenges". The most recent issue, titled "Energy", was released digitally."
I was a Lapham's subscriber July 2021-July 2022, but found they were unable to actually put out an issue quarterly. In July 2022 when they had delivered only two issues of the four I subscribed for, they came back and tried to charge me a renewal for another year's subscription.
I don't know what was happening internally, but it was just impossible for me to support them after that, and I imagine it was the beginning of the end for them.
Lapham, along with Gore Vidal (who died in 2012) were really some of the last public intellectuals that were intelligent and qualified enough to have nuanced, insightful takes on 90% of issues. Lapham in particular is relevant to HN because he was from the old money of San Francisco, long before tech happened. The SF he grew up in doesn’t exist anymore.
Unfortunately one of the consequences of the ad and attention-based technocratic economy is that people like them aren’t valued anymore. Making silly memes or offensive jokes gets you about 10x the attention, and as far as I can tell, every platform is optimized for this. Even the better ones like Substack end up being dominated by loud people with narrow viewpoints.
> Making silly memes or offensive jokes gets you about 10x the attention
Ironically, the front section of Harper's featuring short tidbits and excerpts from random sources had a social-media-esque ADD vibe to it that made it feel edgy to aspiring and enlightened 20 year-olds. E.g. post 9-11 there was a list of songs banned from the radio ("it's raining men" etc.) sharing a page with a court transcript of a wiretapped conversation between a Mafia don to one of his stooges that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of the Sopranos.
Lapham Quarterly also had that vibe -- I seem to remember a tongue-in-cheek visual on how many people Rambo killed in every Rambo movie.
Now and then I see some people with thousands of followers on twitter mimic that style to great effect.
The main difference is obviously how far down the rabbit hole they went with connecting two bits of random information, e.g being able to juxtapose a Don't Play list for the radio during modern times to a Don't Eat list from an edict in the Roman Empire during some plague.
You make a great point. Harper's own website acknowledges Lapham's contributions were done to add some breezier reads to the magazine:
In 1984, Harper’s Magazine was completely redesigned by editor Lewis H. Lapham and MacArthur...Recognizing the time constraints of the modern reader, the revived magazine introduced such original journalistic forms as the Harper’s Index, Readings, and the Annotation to complement its acclaimed fiction, essays, and reporting.
I worked around it by moving the focus from online to printed press. Highly recommend. There's very little left online worth reading apart from niche indie websites that simply don't have enough audience to make them worthy of ensittifying.
I'm losing my faith in online documents. There seems to be entirely too much editing of the past to fit shifting narratives, filtered search results, and tweaked AI output.
How long will it be before we can't believe any of it?
Personally I’ve started collecting old encyclopedias. Especially ones from the early 20th century or so, before public relations/propaganda really developed into a dominant field.
Paper encyclopedias are a joy of discovery. It was important to have a set on the shelf so as a kid I had a playing field where I could randomly open one up and find nothing but good content.
The internet has slop, distractions, and pernicious falsehoods.
Wikipedia is miles above the 80s encyclopedia collection my family had. There was only a single volume out of about 24, on things like science and mechanisms and STEM in general. The description of how heat pumps work, which included an entire page of diagrams that were straight up nonsensical, was so bad it took me until after college to undo the damage enough to actually understand the physics behind it.
If you remember encyclopedias from before computers, 99% of the time you attempted to look something up, you found a singular paragraph, with no sources, barely introducing you to a topic. Even Microsoft Encarta on a bunch of CDs was that barren.
Wikipedia has expanded the expected content and coverage of encyclopedias 10x, and has not significantly reduced accuracy despite a supposed "anyone can contribute" model.
It's no coincidence in my life that I was constantly starving for knowledge until Wikipedia was created. Not that stumbling down wikipedia rabbit holes for hours on end made me a brilliant person or whatever, but it did give me a love for computing history and enough surface level knowledge to hang out around TheDailyWTF since I was 12, and that led to learning that I liked programming and a career in it that I definitely would not have found without wikipedia.
For breadth and content, there's no beating Wikipedia. There are some issues with one-sided moderation, but that's true of the paper encyclopedias as well.
But having a non-internet reference is very good because it encourages learning and curiosity in a way that a website just doesn't. The main thing that's wrong with Wikipedia is that every other distraction online is just a click away.
Of course, that's individual, they have to fit one's worldview to be palatable. We are long past the time when a singular "objective truth" existed at all. For me for example, The Economist feels legit.
A singular "objective truth" never existed. That’s the basis of historiography.
Publications can be "palatable" while not fitting one’s "worldview". The goal of reading should be to be challenged. You can find interesting things anchored in many theoretical frameworks and I encourage people to read editorials spanning different political leanings.
To answer the original comment, I personally read and enjoy The New Yorker and grab the LRB and the Economist from time to time on top of what I read in my native language.
And of course the Economist was literally created to promote free-market ideology:
PROSPECTUS of a weekly paper, to be published every Saturday, and to be called
THE ECONOMIST, which will contain — First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day ...
That's what i mean. Read something that aligns with your personal world. TIME feels too left-wing vs my own views, after reading half an issue i usually start feeling irritated. The Economist has same bias as myself so i find stuff there very logical and fitting my world.
Fair enough, though it wasn't clear to me on first read (and still isn't even after reading your clarification) on your initial comment.
I'll also note that I find the Economist to be among the better sources I read, and its (broadly-advertised) advocacy isn't as obnoxious as in some other pubs or institutions which come to mind.
There has never been an "objective truth". I suspect most people look back and think the news was cleaner when it reality it was not. There are still many publications worthy of a read.
I recently found
https://thebaffler.com/ after watching an interview with its publisher, Thomas Frank, which resonated with me (left-leaning but anti-woke). I haven't read much of it to evaluate yet, though.
