Letters to the Editor Too totally cool! An intelligent, literate Web site! I guess it had to happen. You're on my list of personal favorites and at some point, I may even become a contributor. Right on, left off, and keep it up!
Judy Frabotta
I went to SALON looking for something refreshing, but instead found the same old dull material I can find in any second-rate newspaper's Sunday magazine.
Do we really need another lifestyle magazine? We've already got the yuppie buyer's guide -- the Utne Reader. It's not clear to me how SALON is any different from Wired or other lifestyle magazines -- you presume to tell us what to think and, (perhaps more importantly,) what to buy. Great -- I now know people on the subway and at coffee bars will think I'm hip and enlightened because I'm displaying the latest "hot novel" in my left hand.
The high point, in my cursory visit to SALON, was the review of "Total Eclipse." The low point was the gossip column Newsreal. The headline, "The First Lady Blows Her Deadline," was vapid. It was as mature as a playground taunt: "Hillary blew her deadline, nanny-nanny-boo-boo!"
If I had my eye-teeth, I'd want a magazine that focused less on the personalities of authors and artists and more on what they'd written or created. Am I supposed to be more interested in Amy Tan's book because she has a cute dog? I'd want a magazine that introduced new subjects that ought to be talked about but are inexplicably ignored. I'd want a magazine that submerged the personalities of its writers while foregrounding their writing. Am I supposed to want to read your magazine because the staff and editors live in hip, diverse neighborhoods? I'd want a magazine that had less dross of the culture that comes from the publicity machines.
I hope you can improve and replace some of the smart-ass and pretentious attitude with urbanity and originality. Then again, maybe you're just trying to sell products and have the burden of creating some editorial to trick people into seeing the ads. I hope not.
John McCrory
I found SALON from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, reprinted from The New York Times. I am a writer and journalist based in Sydney, Australia and since my life on the Net began, I've been wondering and waiting for something AMAZING to happen. This looks like it could be it.
Congratulations and the best of luck. I will be checking back again for the next issue.
Jessica Adams
Wow!!! I must tell you that I surf Discovery, PBS, and CNN mostly. But yours is the most elegant. I mean, any publication that reviews the latest Jack Aubrey story is bound to get my interest. Your Roundtable with Crouch, Rodriguez and Co. was not only eminently readable -- a nice surprise for me, a Canadian -- but I felt I was reading thoughts that I could relate to in mind and soul.
I will definitely return and pray that you will continue to be there for us with what I anticipate will be a site of civil discourse and amusement.
Robert Gagnon
SALON looks like a nice, bourgeois page thus far...the largest indication of this being your insistence on "polite discourse" where everyone must use their "real name," and the glaring lack of truly radical/inspiring writers featured. C'mon! Are you planning on getting (and sustaining) many hits from the under-forty age group?
Even though you're on-line, it seems to me you're still stuck in the status quo/korporate supporting pulp-based lit world. Giving us Amy Tan and Camille Paglia is hardly stretching the envelope much.
I appreciated reading the history of salons, but I'm not sure how you are going to convey/celebrate that sort of ambiance, that joi de vivre with JUST WORDS. Are you going to feature any poetry? The Tom Tomorrow comic is a good start, but what about Mike Diana, with his mind-blowing Boiled Angel comic? And the fact that he was busted for publishing his work? You've got to get way more visual...
And please, this whole notion of "discussing things" (Yawn) I think many people are fed up with the gum-flapping and are hungry for something a bit more tangible, like this thing called taking action. Check the Tax The Rich page (www.webcom.com/~ttr/home.html) for an example. Talking is something the pundits/politicos and talk show Rush Limpbones do, they talk and do little else. Is that what SALON is about?
Anthony Jankowski
SALON in its infancy has already cleared the hurdle that faces all online publications -- it's easy on the eyes. You've made the text big enough, in easy-to-digest column inch format, with the right color backgrounds. It's not too graphics-heavy, which those of us without ISDN or T1 lines -- that is, 99.999% of us -- can appreciate.
Amy Tan, her latest book, and her depression have already been covered by Bay Area and some national media, but I loved Mary Gaitskill's take on Nabokov. I hope you'll interview her sometime. She writes fiction and nonfiction with equal brilliance.
I was, however, a little taken aback by the plug to buy Nabokov at the end of her piece. A cynic might ask, is she working for SALON or for Borders? Gives an appearance of a crack in the firewall between editorial and advertising. But it doesn't bother me too much. I assume that we will see negative reviews of books and writers as well as positive. (With a note from Borders that their books have been remaindered so hurry on down?)
Haven't read the rest of it yet, but it all looks good. Congrats!
Bev Talbott
Editor's note: We included the Borders links as a reader service, but we agree with you and other readers that they tended to blur the distinction between advertising and editorial content. We are now consolidating all of our consumer service links, except those in the Sneak Peeks section, on our "Home Shopping" page. All the views expressed in SALON, including those in Sneak Peeks, are solely those of the staff and contributors.
That Maupin piece is truly delicious. Just wondering, have the wandering hordes of homophobic Net-haters stumbled across it?
Andrew Leonard
Re: "Attack of the text snakes": As to slithery text, I do think that it influences one's experience of verbal content. Traditionally, small handwriting (as opposed to a child's big, blocky letters) has been associated with maturity, control, rationality, density, and intelligence. The same may also hold true, on some deeply submerged, visceral level, for typography.
Linda Crowley
Wow, here I've searched cool links for my page from all over the web and you've gathered all those things in just one site. Cintra Wilson, Ian Shoales, Tom Tomorrow, Doug Cruickshank (I miss my Fessenden Review!).... Egad. If you were a woman I'd marry you. But since you're a magazine, I'll just have to read and link to you....
Dr. Bombay
Wow! You guys are doing it right. I'm bookmarking you immediately. The race salon was the best I've heard since the O.J. thing -- I appreciated the real voices that are frequently edited (or self-edited) out of other avenues of media. Good luck & I'll "stay tuned."
Trisha Gorman
I'd be kidding myself if I thought that I was the first Australian to hit on SALON, but who said there was anything wrong with kidding yourself? I just wanted to congratulate you on an exceptionally promising first issue. While I've yet to read every article, I found the race roundtable a fascinating insight, am prepared to read anything about Nabokov, and found Ms. Paglia's talk show comments most amusing (as was Tom Tomorrow).
It's too early to level this criticism, so let's call it a warning: one can already discern a tendency towards Seppo-centrism.* Perfectly understandable given the origins of the staff and the 'first edition' factor, but those of us in other lands who hope to become Foundation SALON Obsessives would definitely want the focus to spread outward.
Keep it hard and hot.
Greg d'Arville
* from Australian rhyming slang -- you work it out, it's a synonym for "American"
All I can say is "WOW!" I like it. It is classy and stimulating. I enjoyed Le Carré's interview so much I am going to order the cassette. Like Le Carré, I was a spook for six years in Germany and I miss the Cold War, with the "evil empire" as our nemesis. Ah, life is more complicated now.
Also, an excellent article on "Nowhere Man". It had completely escaped my attention. Thanks to you I will watch it tonight. Bravo to you all.
Lyn Bronson
SALON is by far the best looking, best reading site on the net. The stories, reviews, and columns are so much more interesting than the HTML-candy put out by the Pathfinder-type sites: they're OK to look at, but they read like the superficial stories that appear in Time.
The design of SALON is heads above other pages, without screaming at us. So many times I was looking at a page and wondering to myself, "How'd they do that?" Then I quickly looked at the source HTML file to see how I can do the same thing. You know what they say about the sincerest form of flattery.
Carl Hart
