Harper’s is a Great Magazine

I don’t read Harper’s Magazine very often, because I don’t read very many magazines, and I avoid issues which prominently feature American politics. When I do pick up a copy, though, I always really enjoy it.

I finally got around to reading the December, 2006 issue, and there was so much to like about it:

• Garret Keizer’s “Loaded” is the most erudite, elegant essay I’ve ever read about gun control: “Anyone who owns firearms for reasons other than hunting and sport shooting (neither of which I do) has admitted that he or she is willing to kill another human being—as opposed to the more civilized course of allowing human beings to be killed by paid functionaries on his or her behalf.”
• “Clash of the Time Lords” by Michelle Stacey, about the shift from solar to atomic time.
• “The Magic Mountain” by Matthew Power, about the economics of a Philippine garbage dump. This piece taught me a new word: cloaca.
• Finally, “Kinderscenen” is yet another beautiful, perfect short story by John Updike. He is such a fine, fine writer: “There is on this shadowy side (its lawn faintly spongy underfoot) the stillness of things Toby doesn’t like to think about–church, and deep woods, and cemetaries where a single potted plant has been left in memory of someone, but, itself forgotten, has long dried out and died.” I have mixed feelings about linking to it, but the whole story is online.