Book Forum's arrival in my mailbox always excited me, as was the case when the latest issue appeared last week.
My joy was crushed when I heard that the issue would be Book Forum's last.
Jay Penske's Penske Media Group, which recently purchased Book Forum's sister publication Art Forum, on Monday announced Book Forum's closure. Penske also owns Rolling Stone, which he is credited with reviving.
Book Forum's demise is a major blow to American literary culture. Founded in 1994, the quarterly like the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books allowed its reviewers to expand their pieces into wide-ranging critical essays, bringing intense personal engagement to the books.
The publication's reviewers were younger, and somewhat hipper, than those at the august NYRB. They were more attuned to the art world, and had the younger generation's Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan sensibility. Yet, the reviews possessed an academic rigor as exacting as those in the Times Literary Supplement.
After supporting Rolling Stone, Penske reverted to a distressing corporate callousness in shutting down Book Forum. Penske surely possesses the financial resources to keep publishing the prestigious quarterly. Instead, he silenced a vital literary journal.
Reading Book Forum's last issue, I was sad and angry to know that the publication would no longer arrive in my mailbox.
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