Lewis H. Lapham
Lewis H. Lapham
Lewis Henry Laphamis an American writer. He was the editor of the American monthly Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly, a quarterly publication about history and literature, and has written numerous books on politics and current affairs...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
Date of Birth8 January 1935
CountryUnited States of America
art new-york thinking
I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.
government demand exceed
The supply of government exceeds demand.
fire framed dens
The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den.
pain children war
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young and rob the old.
people world poverty
Never in the history of the world have so many people been so rich; never in the history of the world have so many of those same people felt themselves so poor.
tofu enthusiasm way
The figure of the enthusiast who has just discovered jogging or a new way to fix tofu can be said to stand or, more accurately, to tremble on the threshold of conversion, as the representative American
culture today imagine
Anti-utopianism continues to suffuse our culture...Today few imagine that society can be fundamentally improved, and those who do are seen as at best deluded, at worst threatening.
war educational book
As many as six out of ten American adults have never read a book of any kind, and the bulletins from the nation’s educational frontiers read like the casualty reports from a lost war.
suits-you suits ifs
If you wear a suit, you can talk to anybody.
reading thinking america
I sometimes think that the American story is the one about the reading of the will.
depressing self agency
We need not seek our own best selves, and in the meantime we inoculate ourselves against the viruses of age and idealism, which, as the advertising agencies well know, depress sales and sour the feasts of consumption.
sacrifice self shrines
The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves . . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine.
japan people germany
The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan.
mean government television
His administration apparently means to define itself as a television program instead of a government...I don't know if it can please both its sponsors and its intended audience.