Eureka!

I've just found 19 handsome, wonderfully preserved copies of HORIZON, that hardbound culture and arts magazine from the 1950's and beyond. I bought them at $2.50 each in a local antique shop last weekend. All are 1970's vintage and are a joy to peruse, read in earnest or earmark for later study. The range of topics and quality of writing are stunning. Some glimpses from the Spring 1971 issue:

Cover Notes (about the classic reprint pasted on front): "A demure Eve presents the fateful apple to an innocent Adam and ushers in the fall of man in a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Today another kind of fall of man is being proposed by the Women's Liberation Movement with its vigorous attack on male domination. The controversial subject is discussed in an article beginning on page 4."

Granted, the topic is dated, but the article presents a valuable overview of men, women, marriage and social history of the sexes. Worth 21st century eyeing.

As is the item labeled "The Canterbury Tales," a review by renowned British novelist Anthony Burgess, whose contempt for a (then) new London musical based on Chaucer's masterpiece is clear in passages like this one: "It is, on the whole, a pretty bad adaptation: the songs are tuneless, the lines lack the medieval gusto of Chaucer's original, and there is an air of sniggering lubricity about the production...this enstaged and watered-down Chaucer is...sanctioned naughtiness." Burgess then more seriously explores Chaucer and some of his characters from the ageless classic.

Following that article is "A Canterbury Album" written and illustrated by French architect Zevi Blum. Monsieur B. verbally and visually captures the "Byzantine melodrama" of five of Chaucer's most famous characters: the Wife of Bath, the Man of Law, the Miller, the Merchant and the Friar. Delightful, witty work by artist Blum.

Other articles from that spring include "The Scoundrel Who Invented Credit" (about Scottish libertine John Law), "The Tempesta Puzzle" (about Georgione's mysterious world famous painting), "The Ashanti" (re: rain forest tribe in Africa), "The Rise and Fall and Rise of Leon Trotsky" ("Rise" is twice part of the title; text has huge b/w photo of Trotsky, his wife, pal Diego Rivera and armed guards at the Trotsky compound in Mexico City), "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Dodo" (yes, the extinct bird), "Loser" (about a disastrous Roman general) and other esoterica that only HORIZON could claim with head unbowed and intelligence intact.

How I love these treasures. They've already taken a commanding place in my heart and on my bookshelves. Reeling and gleeful, I remain the hunter in search of "new" HORIZONs.