Author Vare finds part of his history of Atlantic Monthly here in Salisbury

SALISBURY — When Robert Vare, editor-at-large of The Atlantic Monthly, started his talk at Noble Horizons on May 30 about a new book he edited that chronicles the history of the 150-year-old publication, little did he know that part of the The Atlantic’s history was sitting right in front of him.

Auto racing legend and Lime Rock resident John Fitch told Vare during the  intimate gathering Friday night that he had authored two or three stories in the 1960s that found their way into The Atlantic.

“One was about a big crash I had in France due to our lack of understanding of aerodynamics,� the 90-year-old Fitch told Vare and the bemused audience.

Of course, Vare’s talk on his book, “The American Idea,� a collection of essays by influential writers and thinkers who have appeared in The Atlantic, went back further than 40 years ago.

Vare shared the story of the 19th-century meeting at the Parker House in Boston that resulted in the birth of the first uniquely American magazine. The list of writers attending that meeting reads like a “Who’s Who� of American literature: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell, who served as The Atlantic’s first editor.

“They were part of a revolution in America literature,� Vare said. “The time was ripe for a magazine of politics, arts and culture. They wanted something that would advance the cause of the American idea and they believed the written word had an almost religious duty to inspire and inform.�

The list of marquee contributors to the magazine over its history is as diverse as it is impressive and includes Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Saul Bellow, Albert Einstein, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Mark Twain, Garrison Keillor, Bertand Russell, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman,William Butler Yeats, Robert Louis Stephenson and even future President Teddy Roosevelt.

However, Vare acknowledged a major goof on the part of The Atlantic’s early editors: “In the 19th century, we repeatedly rejected the submission of an aspiring poet from Amherst, Mass.� Vare called it “a colossal error in judgment� that the magazine refused to publish the works of Emily Dickinson whenever she submitted them.

Another gaffe: a cover story in 1999 forecast an astronomical rise in the stock market. It appeared three to four months before “the dotcom� bubble burst.

“That was a major embarrassment,� Vare said.

Vare said his favorite essay in “The American Ideaâ€� is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From the Birmingham Jail.â€�  Vare read aloud the introduction to the piece.

“I’ve read the letter several times and I am knocked out by its literary power,� he said.

Vare stayed at Noble for awhile after the talk and signed copies of the book. The event was jointly sponsored by Noble Horizons and The Lakeville Journal.