With this issue, The New Criterion completes its twentieth year
of publication. Twenty years is a significant anniversary for any
magazine devoted to serious criticism of culture and the arts.
For a magazine
as outspoken and heterodox as The New Criterion
has been, living through a twentieth birthday is almost a miracle.
We hasten to acknowledge that this achieve-
ment has been a collaborative
effort. Indeed, it has been a collaboration of many hands. As
with other magazines, the excellence of The New Criterion is
inseparable from the excellence of its primary intellectual
resource: its writers. From its very first issues, The New
Criterion has been exceedingly fortunate in attracting
distinguished literary talent. Some of that talent was already
established and well known. Much of it was not. Many prominent
figures on the critical landscape today first made their
reputations in our pages, and we are proud to have nurtured so
many young, untried writers. As we conclude this anniversary
year, it seems appropriate to salute the many hands and minds
that have helped fill our pages for two hundred issues. To all
of them we owe a debt of thanks: together, they have made The New
Criterion an informed, lively, and insightful repository of
critical intelligence.
We know from our correspondence that what some readers find
entertaining and informative, others find infuriating. We are
grateful for both sorts of response. It has always been our aim
to delight as well as instruct, and naturally we are pleased to
have found a committed group of readers that shares our critical
outlook. But we are also pleased by those readers who disagree
with what we publish. Criticism aims not at unanimity but at
informed debate, and if we have managed to spark disagreement and
debate on contentious issues we know we are doing our job. A
magazine—any cultural enterprise—is only as vital as its
audience. We are grateful to you, our readers—both our friends
and members of the loyal opposition—for helping to make The New
Criterion one of the most important voices for serious criticism
today.
Our writers have made The New Criterion eloquent and incisive;
our readers have given currency to the ideas expressed in our
pages. But The New Criterion could not exist without a third
group of collaborators: our funders. Like almost all magazines
devoted to high culture and serious criticism, The New
Criterion operates at a considerable yearly deficit and is
therefore structured as a tax-exempt entity. The New Criterion
could never have been created without a group
of visionary
individuals that understood
the intellectual and cultural
potential of a magazine like The New Criterion and that was
well placed to organize funding for the venture. We are
profoundly grateful to
this core group of individuals and to the
institutions they represent for making
The New Criterion
possible. Their steadfast
support allowed a daring experiment to
become a respected standard-bearer for serious engagement with
culture.
We are also profoundly grateful to those individuals who have
lately rallied to our cause and have helped secure the future of
The New Criterion. We wish to thank all those who have become
Friends of The New Criterion and who are helping us prepare for
the years ahead, especially Carol Selle and Donald Oresman, prime
movers of the Friends. This is also the place to mention our
special gratitude to another individual
whose extraordinary help over the years has been
indispensable to the survival of The New Criterion. We mean
Donald Kahn, a lover and supporter of classical music and high
culture whose generosity to The New Criterion—and to other
worthy institutions—has been exemplary. A magazine like
The New Criterion only makes sense if it has the freedom of
critical independence. Mr. Kahn has done a great deal to secure
that freedom. We are immensely grateful for his friendship and
generosity.
