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Raritan: a quarterly review. Ed. Jackson Lears. Vol.27. No. 1. Summer 2007. 31 Mine Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08903. ISSN 0275-1607 $24 for a year's subscription. 167pp. Flatbound, digest.
Raritan contains essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews. About half of the contributors in this issue note in their biographies that they are university professors, and indeed that seems to define the journal's target audience, though not necessarily exclusively. The relative tone of the writing tends to be, more or less, high brow. Just the same, the editorial in this issue argues refreshingly for a certain engagement: "Misconceived notions of patriotism strangle criticism in its cradle. [ . . . ] Under these circumstances, journals that seek to nurture independent thought are more necessary than ever." However, the editor, while stating his commitment "to staying with that agenda," fails to mention that criticism is also strangled by misconceived notions of academic/ literary established-order correctitude (e.g., "good taste"), perhaps because Raritan is, after all, an academic-based journal (Rutgers University) and the editor a professor.
What tends to characterize such journals, rather than independence of thought, is the long-windedness of the prose and clever vacuity of the verse, as well as general disengagement, illustrated in this issue by John...