The New Criterion

Dear Loyal Reader,

For the past several years, I have written our friends and subscribers each autumn seeking financial support for The New Criterion. This past year was no exception, though the financial rumbling then heaving across the land meant that my level of concern had, in the language of the Department of Homeland Security, risen from Yellow ("Elevated") to Orange ("High"). What a difference a few months make! The seismic disturbances we all perceived in September have become a deafening roar, and the economic threat indicator has fluttered upwards to Red ("Severe").

I have never written twice in one year asking for your help. I take this extraordinary step now because of the extraordinary situation we face. In the last couple of months, two of our major funders have told us that they will have to reduce their support for The New Criterion this year. I expect some others to have similarly unhappy tidings as the year unfolds.

My colleagues and I are doing everything we can to find additional sources of support. Our friends are eager to help. We do not, to adapt Dylan Thomas, propose to go gently into that good night. But the sobering truth is that The New Criterion is facing the most serious challenge to its survival in its twenty-seven-year history.

I know we are not alone. Many enterprises, for-profit as well as non-profit, have suffered grievous financial reversals this year; some, I know, will soon be casualties of the calamitous economic d‚gringolade we are soldiering through. I hope and pray that The New Criterion will not be among that unhappy number. Your contribution can make the difference.

I won't regale you with a litany of The New Criterion's excellences and achievements in the realm of cultural criticism. Nor will I dilate on its uniqueness. If you are receiving this letter, you know the magazine and you know that it stands alone. Not only is The New Criterion a major force in the world of cultural polemics, exposing what is meretricious and fraudulent, but also it is a leader in the battle against cultural amnesia. From our first issue more than twenty-seven years ago, we have labored in the vast storehouse of cultural achievement to introduce, or reintroduce, readers to some of the salient figures whose works helped weave the great unfolding tapestry of our civilization. Writers and artists, philosophers and musicians, scientists, historians, controversialists, explorers, and politicians: The New Criterion has specialized in resuscitating important figures whose voices have been drowned out by the demotic inanities of pop culture or embalmed by the dead hand of the academy.

On the occasion of our twentieth anniversary, an editorialist for The Wall Street Journal wrote that The New Criterion was "a refuge for a civilizing element in short supply in contemporary America: honest criticism." You know as well as I that such refuges are now even fewer and farther between. You know, too, how stalwart The New Criterion has been in supplying honest criticism that is as lively and well written as it is intelligent and independent minded. I hope that you will do what you can to help us continue. Your support has never been more necessary or more gratefully received.

Best regards,

Roger Kimball
Editor & Publisher

P.S.: No such letter is complete without a post scriptum reinforcing the urgency of its message. Let me do this by providing a bill of particulars. We need to raise nearly $200,000; find your place in the following!

2 people to give $25,000...................................................$50,000

3 people to give $10,000...................................................$30,000

5 people to give $5,000...................................................$25,000

10 people to give $2,000...................................................$20,000

15 people to give $1,000...................................................$15,000

25 people to give $500.................................................. $12,500

50 people to give $250...................................................$12,500

100 people to give $150...................................................$15,000

TOTAL: $180,000

Gifts of $2,000 or more qualify you and a guest for membership in our Friends of The New Criterion program, with invitations to select talks and events with the editors and writers of the magazine throughout the year and a listing in our annual "Friends Report."

Extraordinary gifts of $25,000 or more will be recognized with special mention in our September 2009 "Notes and Comments."