The New Criterion

Dear Reader:

As a reader, you already know that there is no other periodical like The New Criterion. I know that you value the crisp, witty writing and the informed and independent criticism we publish. I hope that you will do what you can to assure that The New Criterion will survive. We depend upon our friends and readers for the means to keep the doors open and the presses running—mundane realities, but imperative ones.

You know that, intellectually, The New Criterion is now stronger than ever. The truth is, no other magazine offers the cornucopia of critical writing that The New Criterion offers. When you open The New Criterion, you know you are going to get frank, intelligent, and well-written commentary on a wide range of cultural endeavor. As our enemies have reason to know, we excel in pointing out the nakedness of emperors in the art world, the university, and elsewhere in the world of culture. But The New Criterion is not only about cultural polemics. It is also about cultural recovery. It stands alone in its thoughtful recuperation of forgotten figures from the pantheon of cultural achievement.

Whether the subject is dance, philosophy, theater, literature, art, history, music or a dozen other subjects, you’ll find writing that is uniquely bracing and informative in The New Criterion. You already know that. We are pleased that our achievements are increasingly noticed by the larger world—by The Daily Telegraph in London, for example, which recently described The New Criterion as “America’s leading journal of the arts and intellectual life.”

Over twenty-five years ago, at the founding of The New Criterion, Hilton Kramer and Samuel Lipman set out to create a magazine that would be an alternative to the leftist monopoly on the world of ideas—a publication that would be as entertaining  and well-written as it was independent and provocative.

I hope that you will join Hilton and me in paving the way for our next twenty-five years.

Onwards!

Sincerely,

Roger Kimball
Editor & Publisher