My Godfather is Almost as Unimpresed as Your Grandpa

Seeing the Grandpa rant reminded me of this. My Godfather sent me this after I sent him a few back issues. I was painfully hungover, and this sort of rational yet cutting analysis nearly made me cry, and did make me want to become a teacher for about 6 hours. He is an expert in Spanish Castles, which makes him more than qualified to tell me I am a bit of a dosser.

If you want to print this in your “Sad Old Gits” section check with Stephen first. I am not likely to be successful in placing “Vice” in my part of London because the newsagents that I know well are fairly high-ground and things like the American Apparel adverts on the back cover would not appeal to them. One that I showed it to said “take it to John Menzies”, but I guess you have already done that.

Someone of my age (I’m really old) inevitably compares “Vice” with other ventures, perhaps from a time before you were born. The mix is a bit like “Esquire” tried to be for a time (that had an elegance that “Vice” lacks). Then “Bored & Dejected” (I can’t remember its proper name but you know the one I mean) and “The Face”.
What is different about it is that as a barometer of young people’s supposed interests, it is really depressing. There’s not much to read, and virtually nothing by anybody one could regard as a writer. Overall there is an obsession with bodily functions. Is that what young people (I mean teens-twenties, not schoolboys) are really interested in? It is reassuring that there are remarkably few typos, and the whole thing is very well put together. If you want to write, you need to be in something with more column space – the other end of the spectrum is Le Monde, which has hardly any pictures, and most of those are the work of illustrators. I only read Le Monde once a week, but I really enjoy it partly because it is a read.
I’ll circulate the copies I have amongst likely readers that I know – it would have been a bit easier when I was still working at London Metropolitan University.