_The Atlantic_ moves to the Pacific...

[Rohit Khare]

[Fascinating. is this really the cultural watermark that the LA Times 
makes it out to be? As an Angeleno, bully for us! ;-) --RK]

> "I just know more interesting people in Los Angeles than I do in any 
> other city,"

[Also, as a side note, one of the most interesting volumes in the 
bathroom branch of the FoRK library is an old volume from 1954 (?): 
Jubilee: 100 years of the Atlantic. It's truly fascinating to see how 
the intro blurbs were written from a differerent viewpoint in the 
decade after the War and a decade before the final victory of the 
abolitionist agenda with the civil rights movement to come...]

http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-et-rutten12jul12.column
REGARDING MEDIA / TIM RUTTEN

Atlantic turns to the Pacific
Tim Rutten

July 12 2003
Los Angeles' bright galaxy of stars is about to increase by three.

There's already a lot of talk about Gary Payton and Karl Malone, of 
course, but don't overlook Benjamin Schwarz. He may not have a shoe 
contract, but in the world of American letters he's definitely got game.

Since taking over as the Atlantic Monthly's literary editor three years 
ago, the 39-year-old Yale- and Oxford-trained historian has reshaped 
the venerable magazine's book section into the shrewdest, best-written 
and most surprising cultural report currently on offer between slick 
covers. Now, Schwarz plans to break with 146 years of tradition and 
move the Atlantic's literary editorship from Boston, where the magazine 
was founded and will continue to publish, to set up shop in Los Angeles.

In part, Schwarz said by phone, the move — which will occur in 
September — was prompted by the realization that many of his most 
valued regular contributors either live in L.A. or came to the magazine 
through connections here. "I just know more interesting people in Los 
Angeles than I do in any other city," Schwarz said. "In a way, that's 
unsurprising, since nowadays there are many more independent 
intellectuals doing much more interesting work in Los Angeles than 
anywhere else in the country."

Still, it's a surprising choice for a storied but formerly staid 
magazine that once was home to the transcendentalists and the 
abolitionists, that published not only its founding editor, James 
Russell Lowell, but also Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain and Bret 
Harte, who in 1871 was paid the then-unheard-of sum of $10,000 to 
produce 12 stories.

Atlantic contributor David L. Ulin, who edited "Writing Los Angeles: A 
Literary Anthology," compares Schwarz's move to the one William Dean 
Howells made in the 1890s, when he left Boston and the Atlantic for New 
York, thereby ratifying that city's status as a new center of serious 
writing.

"Ben wouldn't claim Howells' stature," Ulin said. "But with this move, 
he's created a moment that's interesting on two levels." The first, 
said Ulin, is pragmatic. "In the current age, there is less and less 
reason for publications to be centralized, particularly those that deal 
with a national media — like books — or culture. In other words, you no 
longer have to be anywhere in particular to do this work. So, in that 
sense, it's a less radical step than it might appear."

Second, said Ulin, is the cultural and intellectual significance of the 
move. "It could well be a radical step. Ben already is alive to the 
possibilities of the place. His sense of Los Angeles and how it works 
is keen and thoughtful. He has a deep respect for the place and its 
nuances. I think you already see L.A.'s influence in his taste for 
smart but accessible writers and in a broader sense of what is 
culturally relevant than you usually find among literary editors." (One 
recent issue, for example, had an essay on the phenomenon of the 
sexless marriage by Los Angeles-based contributing editor Caitlin 
Flanagan. An upcoming issue will contain a reflection on Lucille Ball 
by bestselling novelist Mona Simpson, and on Hollywood and politics by 
Marc Cooper.)

For Schwarz, the move represents something of a homecoming. After 
completing his academic training, he worked as an analyst for the 
Brookings Institution and then, for eight years, at the Santa 
Monica-based Rand Corp., where he produced studies of the El Salvadoran 
civil war, Chinese military modernization and terrorism. "History is a 
great field for a generalist," he said, "and my interest in diplomatic, 
military and intellectual history was good preparation for the work 
we're doing at the Atlantic."

Like its major rivals, the New Yorker and Harper's, the Atlantic has 
entered a new era of vigor and relevance, regularly publishing not only 
hard-edged, intensely reported pieces on politics and foreign affairs, 
but also sophisticated explorations of popular culture by writers with 
distinctive voices.

"We sensed from the beginning, that a book section is a terrific way to 
engage a wide range of ideas and developments in academe and in both 
high and popular culture," Schwarz said. "One of the things I wanted 
for this section from the beginning was stylish, intellectual writing 
about popular culture. This is ground none of our competitors was 
tilling, not the New Yorker nor the New York Review or the New 
Republic. I'm convinced that popular culture — the manners and mores of 
a lot of our readers, in other words — is something worth delving into."

Why not do it, as others do, from New York?

"In New York, there are a lot of magazines, including our main rivals, 
drawing on the same talent month after month. I've long thought that 
L.A. is an underexploited literary field. It has an extraordinarily 
large pool of highly educated and talented people thinking in very 
interesting ways about contemporary culture. It's a much more 
interesting place than Boston, for example. Our long residence here has 
given us a not-entirely-undeserved staid and New Englandy image we're 
now putting behind us."

Among the Los Angeles writers Schwarz has enlisted among his regular 
contributors are Ulin, novelist Mona Simpson, cultural commentator 
Flanagan, satirist Sandra Tsing Loh and such distinguished local 
scholars as Eugen Weber, Ronald Steele and Perry Anderson.

Schwarz noted that he first met Christopher Hitchens, who writes a 
monthly literary essay for the Atlantic, at UCLA's Center for Social 
Theory and Comparative History, which Anderson directs.

"Perry has brilliant people from all over the world regularly working 
and speaking there, which is something that happens all the time at 
various places in Los Angeles and goes all but unrecognized," Schwarz 
said. "As a national magazine, we have to recognize the Los Angeles 
that exists beyond the entertainment industry. Today there's more 
interesting history being done at UCLA than there is at Harvard. 
Caltech is the most important center of pure science anywhere in the 
country. It suddenly dawned on me that it's absurd for a magazine with 
our ambitions not to have an editorial presence in Los Angeles."

Flanagan, who has a review of "The Devil Wears Prada" in the Atlantic's 
current issue and "a revisionist look at 1950s housewives" in its 
forthcoming number, notes Schwarz's "huge belief in Los Angeles as an 
intellectual center. His friends already are thick on the ground here. 
He's interested in what's fresh and interesting and can tell what's 
real from what's not."

Then there was Schwarz's realization that "not only are most of the 
Atlantic's readers residents of California," he said, "but also that 
most of the most interesting writers with whom I regularly work are 
living in Los Angeles."