Magazine making is an art.  It was, is, and always will be.  However, there is great art, mediocre art and just plain bad ugly art.  To each its own.  Continuing my journey into the magazines from years gone by, let alone a century, I happened to come across the first issue of Horizon magazine from September 1958.  It is a hard back that is encyclopedic in look and content.

The editors wrote in the foreword (two full pages) to the first issue: “We take for our title the word horizon because it is here, where earth and sky meet, that one may observe those jagged interruptions in the landscape that are the words of man: the squat mud houses of ancient Sumer;”  The editors continued, “the gleaming statuary of the isles of Greece; the stately sky line of Venice when “she did hold the gorgeous East in fee”; a perfect bridge in Peking; our own soaring, protean civilization; all that moved Milton to write that

         Towered Cities please us then,

          And the busie humm of men.

I wonder if today’s reader would need a translation of the above.  Remember, this is just part of the foreword of the magazine.  The editors continue, “Culture, the concern of this new magazine, is both achievement and dream, a work of hands and a movement of the spirit, the special property of man since the great miracle of the Sixth Day – since Darwin’s hairy quadruped dropped from his tree and (how many millennia later?) first lifted up his gaze to seek something beyond mere food and drink.”

If that’s not enough of pure excellent prose, read on and say how magazines were made and how they were meant to be.  The editors of Horizon continued, “ Culture is art and ideas, past and present, taken in sum as a guide to life.  It is history too, the science which Dionysius tells us is “philosophy teaching by examples,” with philosophy suspended between the I-believe of theology and the I-know of science.”

The editors added, “ This magazine in any case is commenced in the belief that some better guide than now exist in America is needed to the house of culture, with all its thousands of rooms.”  In conclusion, the editors wrote, “We invite all those whose interests lie in this broad field, whether as contributors or readers, to join us in this venture.”

When was the last time you read something like this? Something that makes the magazine a piece of art to keep and collect?  Are the magazines of today worth keeping?  Are they a “better guide than” what exists in America today? You be the judge and the jury. 

Would love to read your comments. As always keep in mind that if you would like to take a dive into the “oldies but goldies” magazines of the past, feel free to reach to John Henry at the Specia Collections division of The University of Missouri Libraries and ask for the Samir Husni Magazine Collection.

Until the next musing, stay tuned …

All the best

Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni