About

Unlike typical literary magazines in the digital age, which are so often confined to one aesthetic or academic corner, TMR strives to approach literature as part of the Total Culture. That is, to not be restricted to any special audience. We publish—along with fiction, poetry, and criticism—essays on politics and general cultural problems, as well as considerations of specific developments in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the popular arts. We also publish occasional on-the-spot reports from various parts of The United States, Great Britain, and Continental Europe, as well as regular letters dealing with the latest literary and cultural events.

Our policy is to resist the growing division in modern culture between the sensibility of art and the more rational intelligence that has gone into social and philosophical thinking. We think there is a level of the contemporary mind at which these currents meet—a level providing common ground for the educated reader and avant-garde writer, who have been kept apart by all sorts of prejudices and conventions. Our general conception of the ideal reader of TMR may be suggested by a brief prospectus of some of her interests and attitudes. As we see her, the ideal reader is receptive to new work in fiction, poetry, and art, is aware of the major tendencies in contemporary criticism, is concerned with the structure and fate of modern society, in particular with the precise nature and menace of Populism, is informed about new currents in psychology and the other humanistic sciences, is opposed to such nativist demagogues as Donald Trump and to all other varieties of no-nothingism, and feels above all that what happens in literature and the arts has a direct effect on the quality of her own life. Listing her interests in this way make our ideal reader sound formidable, but, really, is this not our common idea of an educated person, the pivot of any decent society and lively culture?  

Overall our mission is to convey the writer’s influence in the digital age. To curate, publish, and catalogue independently-generated material, underlining both emerging and renowned thinkers, artists, and writers by encouraging dialogue, critique, and experimentation from the literary community at large.

—Y.R. / D.K. March 2025