Lewis Lapham

Lewis Lapham paces back and forth in front of a young audience at Columbia University. At 63, he is very lean and very tall. He hunches slightly, and his fingers configure themselves around the cigarette he is not allowed to smoke in this room. His preferred gesture, a sort of sweep led by the first two fingers of his right hand, is meant, in its purest form, to leave a trail of smoke. He has the bouncy walk of a jazz musician.

Lewis Lapham flips up the top of his Zippo lighter, ignites another Parliament and inhales deeply. At 71, he's about to step down after 28 years as the editor of Harper's magazine, but he's not talking about that right now. Instead, he's telling the story of his aborted job interview at the CIA back in 1957, when Lapham, after matriculating at Hotchkiss and Yale and Cambridge, hoped for a career as a Cold Warrior.

For a man of strong opinions, Lewis Lapham is in an enviable position. The longtime editor of Harper's magazine can vent those opinions in Notebook columns in every issue--being subject, presumably, to nobody's blue pencil but his own. No wonder that the anger and gloom with which Lapham views the United States in this collection of 52 columns from 1989-'95 is mixed with such a sense that he is having a terrific time.

30 Satires Lewis H. Lapham The New Press: 264 pp., $23.95 * Each stage of a nation's life has its appropriate literary form. Epics are good for heralding its glorious beginnings; odes, for celebrating its ardent, hopeful youth. Satire is reserved for puncturing the follies of its rich and dissipated maturity. Juvenal did the job for the Roman Empire. For 20 years Lewis H.

Lewis Lapham flips up the top of his Zippo lighter, ignites another Parliament and inhales deeply. At 71, he's about to step down after 28 years as the editor of Harper's magazine, but he's not talking about that right now. Instead, he's telling the story of his aborted job interview at the CIA back in 1957, when Lapham, after matriculating at Hotchkiss and Yale and Cambridge, hoped for a career as a Cold Warrior.

30 Satires Lewis H. Lapham The New Press: 264 pp., $23.95 * Each stage of a nation's life has its appropriate literary form. Epics are good for heralding its glorious beginnings; odes, for celebrating its ardent, hopeful youth. Satire is reserved for puncturing the follies of its rich and dissipated maturity. Juvenal did the job for the Roman Empire. For 20 years Lewis H.

Historically, American democracy has given rise to many fears as well as hopes. George Washington, disillusioned at the end of his life, complained that one could "set up a broomstick" as candidate, call it a "true son of Liberty" or a "Democrat" and it would still "command their votes in toto!" Like Washington, many founding fathers dispaired of the new democratic order they had created.

We live in a time in which the word "literally" routinely gets used metaphorically. "The deputies are literally walking on air," a Texas policeman recently exulted in response to a pay raise. So perhaps we should not be surprised when the word "metaphor" gets used in a bluntly literal-minded way.

Several countries have already attempted to transplant France's "Apostrophes" to their networks--unsuccessfully. Now the United States is taking a shot at it. On Sunday, the Public Broadcasting Service will introduce "Bookmark," a 26-week series featuring round-table discussions of new books with authors and editors. Hosted by Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's magazine, "Bookmark" will be seen locally at 9 a.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28.

Salman Rushdie will be seen reading excerpts from his controversial novel "Satanic Verses" on an installment of "Bookmark," the PBS series about books. The program is due to air locally at 9 a.m. Sunday on KCET Channel 28. At the time the reading was taped, "Bookmark" also was planning to feature Rushdie as a guest to talk about his work. That was before he was forced into hiding because of the Ayatollah Khomeini's death order, however. Now the book will be discussed without him.

We live in a time in which the word "literally" routinely gets used metaphorically. "The deputies are literally walking on air," a Texas policeman recently exulted in response to a pay raise. So perhaps we should not be surprised when the word "metaphor" gets used in a bluntly literal-minded way.

Lewis Lapham paces back and forth in front of a young audience at Columbia University. At 63, he is very lean and very tall. He hunches slightly, and his fingers configure themselves around the cigarette he is not allowed to smoke in this room. His preferred gesture, a sort of sweep led by the first two fingers of his right hand, is meant, in its purest form, to leave a trail of smoke. He has the bouncy walk of a jazz musician.

For a man of strong opinions, Lewis Lapham is in an enviable position. The longtime editor of Harper's magazine can vent those opinions in Notebook columns in every issue--being subject, presumably, to nobody's blue pencil but his own. No wonder that the anger and gloom with which Lapham views the United States in this collection of 52 columns from 1989-'95 is mixed with such a sense that he is having a terrific time.

Historically, American democracy has given rise to many fears as well as hopes. George Washington, disillusioned at the end of his life, complained that one could "set up a broomstick" as candidate, call it a "true son of Liberty" or a "Democrat" and it would still "command their votes in toto!" Like Washington, many founding fathers dispaired of the new democratic order they had created.

A New York magazine editor testified Wednesday that Roman Polanski made "tasteless and vulgar" advances to a woman at a Manhattan restaurant shortly after the death of his wife, Sharon Tate. Testifying in London in Polanski's libel lawsuit against publisher Conde Nast, Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's magazine, confirmed that he was the source of an anecdote related in a 2002 article in Vanity Fair magazine.