Issue 196 | Correspondence | The Sun Magazine

Correspondence

I am struggling to build a new business and have no money. In fact, I am deeply in debt and I’ve let all my magazine subscriptions lapse.

However, the one magazine I cannot imagine being without is The Sun. I borrowed thirty dollars to renew.

Michael Waddell Newburyport, Massachusetts

We regret we will no longer be subscribing to The Sun. Recent issues have lost their intellectual and emotional gallantry, and succumbed to a level of sentimentality and egocentrism one would expect out of Berkeley.

Also, we feel you discriminate against new poets and writers by publishing your cronies. Shame, shame.

The Grunzweigs Wellesley, Massachusetts

I have a Ph.D., almost four hundred semester hours in a variety of subjects, and a minor in English — but I simply can’t comprehend most of the articles in The Sun!

William T. Clark Vanceburg, Kentucky

Every month for over ten years I looked forward to seeing The Sun in my mailbox. In a world gone glitzy and colorized beyond belief, I loved The Sun in all its black-and-white charm and glory. It evoked an image of years ago. I smiled as I pulled it out of the mailbox.

But the new headings and artwork look like the glut of catalogs that bombard our mailboxes. I keep censoring my feelings about the new look, but I keep coming back to “I hate it.” I didn’t smile when I pulled this one [Issue 194] out. I groaned! It doesn’t look special anymore. It’s just like everything else. Down with the new — back with the old.

Linda Cole Santa Barbara, California

Regarding the changes in The Sun: as the Next-To-Last Hippie on earth, I see everything that isn’t purely handmade — and even handmade things that are later sold — as a yuppie sellout, even though there are no longer any yuppies to sell out to, as most of them are on the unemployment lines with the rest of us. The design changes give The Sun that condominium, relaxed, wearing-a-shirt-whose-subtle-blue-I-appreciate kind of hot-tub look.

On the other hand, it’s got a newness that’s new, and I like something of its aura — a brave spectacle of sleep destroying. Everything is bigger and brighter, like when you wake up in the morning and the sun comes out. I suppose I’d prefer if it didn’t echo our culture so much — if it were more purely Tanganyikan or purely Chilean. (I love how books printed in Albania look — and I’m not trying to be cute.) But it’s necessary and timely; my name has been restored to the back cover where it belongs, where the very first item I ever wrote for The Sun is cited.

Sparrow Brooklyn, New York

While I greatly admire your magazine, I’m sorry to see the new design. I very much liked the old one. The new typeface reminds me of an eye chart.

John de Forest New York, New York

I thoroughly enjoyed your essay on gum health [“The Sky’s The Limit,” Issue 194]. Never have I heard this message put in such global and individual terms at the same time. I like the “detritus of the day” and the “toxic dump” notions; I’ll use those in the future if you don’t mind.

Bennett Houston, D.D.S. Chapel Hill, North Carolina
[Dr. Houston is the editor’s dentist.]
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