Mischief versus Integrity at New Escapologist

If we were to bring New Escapologist back as a printed magazine (which I often toy with but might be serious about this time!), I’d like to return to the central gag: that it’s a highly improbable magazine for “Escapologists.”

I’m always amused by impossibly niche magazine titles like Cigar Aficionado, Total Carp, and Potato Storage International, all of which are real!

New Escapologist (whose title has the perfectly conventional structure of New Scientist, New Internationalist, the New Statesman, New European, New Woman) would be the perfectly conventional magazine for a very niche community.

I wanted imaginative people to see it and think of Houdini with his playfully shackled feet up as he reads the latest dispatches in escape artistry. And for the less imaginative to boggle, “Where is the market for something like this?”

Maybe I nurtured a hope that we’d feature in the “guest publications” bit on Have I Got News for You.

However, somewhere between the pilot issue in 2007 (which also suffered from the premise-detracting complication of trying to resemble an in-flight magazine) and Issue Two in 2008, I became enamored with the bookish self-published era of the Idler magazine. They in turn were inspired by the self-publishing ethos of William Morris and perhaps also Bill Drummond. I admired (and continue to admire) the slightly anticapitalist ethic of publishing meaty essays instead of ephemeral magazine-quality material like product reviews and op-ed columns. I liked that they had perfect-bound spines and would look nice on the shelf.

For better or worse, the aspiration to integrity trumped my more natural sense of mischief.

So! If we were to bring the magazine back from the dead next year, my vision would be in part to return to that basic gag of a super-niche magazine for Escapologists.

We could still have meaningful essays in the form of feature articles and we could still solicit interviews with “prominent citizens” like we used to, but we could also have things like book reviews, letters to the editor, the latest in personal escape tactics, a travel column, a non-boring finance section, an escapological agony aunt, and all that sort of thing.

What do you think, oh gentle reader? Would you like to see a more magaziney New Escapologist true to its roots in 2023? Or a continuation of the Victorian-looking essay format? Or should I leave it buried forever? Leave a comment here or drop me an email if you have feelings.

If I really decide to run with this, I’ll post a more in-depth survey to collect your opinions. But some comments now would certainly help to stoke the embers and bud-nip any problems (like mixed metaphors?) upstream. Thanks in advance.