Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: Popular magazines yawn at the turn of the century

Friday, Dec. 17, 1999 | 9:33 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books/magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at 990-2446 or dickens@vegas.com

Warning: This column will discuss the new millennium as if it will arrive in all its bawling glory 14 days from now. Of course I know it won't truly get here until the dawn of 2001. That's simple math. But this isn't a math column (would that it were!), and since everyone is treating this New Year's as that New Year's, this column will, too. Math bows to metaphor every time. So hold fire, you sticklers for facts, pickers of nits, scribblers of supercilious letters of correction. I do not want to hear from you. Tell it to Father Time or Baby New Year.

That said, I don't give much of a damn about the new millennium. Or the turn of the century.

Except for this: I wanted to read about it.

I wanted to go to my mailbox and find a final 20th-century issue of Esquire so packed with big-shot bylines and What It All Meant that the mere act of lugging it into the house would have kinked my spine.

"This year," Esquire Editor David Granger wrote in the December issue, "we made a conscious decision not to give over too many pages in our year-end issues to looking backward ..."

Weenie!

Well, I also wanted to visit the newsstand and see an issue of Vanity Fair crammed with special material, all backward glances and future tense ...

"Vanity Fair," sniffed Editor Graydon Carter, "has the distinction, if you can call it that, of being one of the few magazines not to have produced a 'Special' Millennium Issue this year."

As it happens, that's not much of a distinction. Plenty of magazines have passed up the chance to do an all-out, super-size, all-the-trimmings century/millennium edition. Carter: "You can chalk this up to laziness, incompetence or just a general millennial ennui. I prefer the last explanation." Maybe. But I suspect the first or second.

Sure, some magazines will churn out commemorative editions, particularly the newsweeklies. But, a few snarky sidebars and charticles aside, their packages will undoubtedly have an antiseptic, paper-of-record quality to them (although Time's choice for Man of the Century will surely be intriguing).

However, the high-profile monthlies had the time and mastheads to assemble proper century and millennium send-offs. Huge, beefy packages full of literary verve and intellectual whimsy. This has been an eventful, brawling, jam-packed 1,000 years -- what a challenge to magazine types to demonstrate their creative ambitions, the scope of their imaginations and boldness! It was our due as magazine consumers, darn it, and a wan disclaimer about "millennial ennui" hardly suffices; it sounds suspiciously like a failure of nerve. Somehow, cover stories on Meg Ryan (Vanity Fair) and "175 Things a Man Should Do Before He Dies" (Esquire), don't make for issues I'll stuff in my time capsule.

It's not just Vanity Fair and Esquire. GQ recruited some big writers (John Updike, Allan Gurganus) to rhapsodize about their favorite years of the century; it was well-done, but a token effort nonetheless. Quasi-intellectual journals like Harper's and The Atlantic -- where you might have expected a dose of long perspective -- didn't bother. As for award-winning Outside, at the end of a century filled with environmental-outdoorsy developments -- nothing special.

OK, I thought, maybe they're conserving their energies for big hello-millennium issues in January. Of course, that's it! That's not it! As the January issues start to trickle in (Esquire's annual "Dubious Achievements," Outside), the millennial ennui is still in evidence.

Credit is due to those who did try: The New York Times Magazine, with a generally interesting series of millennial issues; Rolling Stone, with two tepid special issues, one focusing on photography, one devoted to the milestoned blab and scribble of famous people and writers; Sports Illustrated, whose scribes dreamed of the seminal sporting events they'd like to have seen in person. And, of course, Playboy, with the Playmate of the Century (why else read it?).

We have yet to see the year-end New Yorker or the January GQ, so, as always here at Shelf Life, hope flickers on.

Footnote

For those readers who are also writers, a heads-up: Poet Bruce Isaacson will lead a 12-week writing workshop titled, "Literature of Place, Las Vegas," beginning in January at the Enigma Garden Cafe on 918 S. 4th St.

The goal is to discuss and produce writing rooted in this singular location. According to Isaacson, participants (poets and prose-writers both welcome) will read examples of "the literature of place," then work on their own. The reading list includes Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Joyce, Henry Miller and Ralph Ellison.

The times and start date are to be announced; most likely it will be on Saturday or Sunday mornings. The cost is $60; call Isaacson for more information at 869-4813. Registration is limited to about a dozen, so call soon. It's from such gatherings that a literary scene -- if there's to be one in Las Vegas -- will most likely arise.