Navasky's lullaby.

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 magazine. But the economics of the little magazine simply don't work (which is why, naming no names, some little magazines have become cruise lines that publish magazines on the side). Navasky recounts in fine detail and with high hilarity, some of it intentional, the money chase he's run to keep The Nation going. He's protean. He's Sisyphean. Hell, he's Odyssean. He's also something of a whiner.

My own take is that harsh conditions tend to bring out the best in little magazines: They must hold their readers close; they must cultivate a defensible space in the literary supermarket; and they must find and nurture new writers. New writers tend, happily, to be cheap writers, but little magazines can create an alternative universe in which brand-name writers like Calvin Trillin, under Navasky's editorial spell, work for fees in the "high two figures." The economics of little magazines may not work but they are in some circumstances workable, nonetheless. NR has proved as much. Under the great Ed Capano and the underrated Wick Allison, it has flirted with commercial viability.

Another common thread winding through the history of little magazines, a thread dyed an arresting shade of red, is legal bills. For tiny enterprises little magazines seem to run up very large legal bills. Why? It's usually the principle of the thing. That's not the principle that all available funds ought to be siphoned off by law firms lest they corrode Spartan office habits; the principle, rather, that words are important artifacts, the sacred relics of democratic process, and must be defended. Even unto the courthouse steps, so help you God.

Navasky recounts here at impressive length his own legal battles, fascinating I'm sure to those directly involved in the disputes. What is striking to the noncombatant is the difference between Navasky's (and, occasionally, Buckley's and Peretz's) response to the actionable offense and, say, the average businessman's. When the latter is accosted by Eliot Spitzer about the missing $100 million, the businessman asks, "How much do you want?" and, as the saying goes, tries to put the matter behind him. The little-magazine guy, inflamed by an offhanded insult, says, "I'll see you in court for the rest of our natural-born lives." As we were suggesting earlier, little magazines are not for people hung up on issues of mental health.

Through it all, through the deadlines and lawsuits and volcanic eruptions of staff distemper, the little magazine perdures, struggling issue by issue to make its case perfectly, always failing, always advancing. Its role in the life of the free society was perhaps best described by James Curran, former editor of New Socialist: "We perform a knitting function, bringing together groups with very different ideas." That's exactly how it was when long ago I first walked the corridors of NR, dodging redwoods named Burnham and Kendall and Meyer, as issue by issue Buckley and his band of brothers knitted together what came to be known as the conservative movement. The question was always, How can we edge closer to the bull's eye? How can we nick the combustible core of an issue so as to explode it into public concern? It was neither an original concern nor a new question and it was usually reduced to proxy discussion of editorial technique.

In the early 1800s, The Edinburgh Review considered the relative merits of bylined pieces, which tended toward obscurantism, over against unsigned editorials that could be off-puttingly oracular: "It was true that anonymity made possible the monstrous charlatanry of the 'editorial we.' Equally it enabled a vain editor to rewrite reviewer's copy with impunity. Yet on the other hand the reviewer who has signed his name was apt to turn into a mere performer; a crowd pleaser who wrote only what was expected of him." Pick your poison, little magazine, but answer the question. How can you make your point so compellingly as to move the world?

Mr. Freeman is chairman of the Blackwell Corporation.