Navasky's lullaby.(A Matter of Opinion)(Book Review)

A Matter of Opinion, by Victor S. Navasky (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 464 pp., $27)

IN this absorbing account of his long stewardship of The Nation, Victor Navasky provides unimpeachable testimony that in matters of national consequence he and his magazine have been--what's the word we're looking for here?--wrong. Yes, that's it: Wrong on the Stalinists. Wrong on terrorism. Wrong on the nuclear freeze. Wrong on socialism. Wrong on welfare reform. Wrong on educational choice. Wrong on tax incentives. Wrong on the culture of life. And of course wrong on people, from Reagan to Vidal to Castro to Thatcher to Hiss. (Navasky carried the torch for Alger Hiss even after the last flame had flickered dead from oxygen deprivation. One can almost hear Hiss crying from some dark smoke-hole, "I love you, Vic, but let it go, man, let it go.") For his misperceptions and misprescriptions we didn't really need a book-length recitation. A handwritten note of apology, terse and abject, might have struck the right tone.

But this book, lodged as it is in the dictatorship of relativism, isn't really about right and wrong. It's the story of a guy who falls head over heels for a little magazine, a real bodice-ripper, and for that we forgive him almost everything. Don't look here for media trivia about power, fame, and money. If Navasky had fallen for a big magazine, or a cable channel, there would have been no romance here, no boy-meets-magazine lullaby. No, with the career recounted in this book Navasky takes his place in that distinguished line of peace-disturbing editors who kept the democratic conversation going: men like Addison and Steele, with The Spectator and The Tatler. Walter Bagehot was a little-magazine guy, at The Economist, as were Albert Jay Nock at The Freeman and Carey McWilliams at The Nation. In our own day, we have an editor named Buckley at NATIONAL REVIEW and Martin Peretz at The New Republic. Victor Navasky, arriving later but asserting his claim every bit as forcefully, is in their company.

As distinctive, even singular, as their voices have been, these little-magazine guys have much in common. Most conspicuous is their Archimedean conceit. While most human beings trudge to the office to perform a job and pick up a paycheck, the little-magazine guy dashes down to the office to move the world. The world is not so much his oyster as a hod to be carried, an object to be levered from where it is and obviously shouldn't be to somewhere else where, properly positioned, it will produce a better world. This is heady work, bordering on the delusional, which may explain why little-magazine staff dynamics sometimes resemble those of Jack Nicholson's ward-mates in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's a tough job, this world-moving business. Results differ, we can see, depending on the angle of leverage and the rhetorical force applied. One sees clearly for instance that, in Buckley's case, with a nudge here and a shove there, he managed to turn the world upside down. Navasky, for his part, could only watch in pain as the world rolled back over his exposed toes. But who's counting wins and losses here, it's how you play the game. Or to sound less like a loser: It's important that the game be played, that the debate be intelligent and protracted, that every idea get its chance and that none gain uncritical acceptance.

Little magazines are thus concerned always and everywhere with the principle of the thing. As payday approaches, how ever, the principle may be put to one side as the boss concentrates on the money of the thing. Or lack of it. For it is the dirty little secret of journals right, left, and center that their persistence rebukes capitalism's assumption about economic decisions' being driven by profit motive. To my knowledge, and more conclusively, to Navasky's, nobody has ever invested in a little magazine with the expectation of financial profit. Psychic rewards abound, of course. Nothing sets you up in the morning like a good earth-moving edition of your little ...