The Question: To Toss or Not to Toss Junk Mail?

The trouble with junk mail is that you can’t afford to throw it out without slitting the envelope and taking a look inside. It might contain money.

I don’t mean those envelopes that say “You have already won a million dollars! or a trip to Bermuda.” Somebody might win a million dollars but I know it won’t be me. The odds make it hardly worth opening the envelope.

However, I have been twice burned. Many years ago, when I was struggling to make ends meet, Reader’s Digest excerpted five words of mine for its “rich, beautiful prose” department or whatever it was called. They did not ask my permission; they did not advise me. They simply sent me a $100 check, which I promptly threw into the wastebasket. Somehow I had second thoughts. It occurred to me that my name and address were typewritten, not stamped. I retrieved the letter.

What a windfall that was!

Many years later, in fact not long ago, I evidently dropped a corporation mailing into the wastebasket, only to learn later that it had contained 80 shares of stock. I went to a great deal of trouble to have the stock replaced.

Even so, I find it hard to open all my junk mail. It is too tedious. I take chances. All envelopes that say I have won something I automatically throw away. I am a little more careful with the others.

For instance, I opened a mailing the other day from an Eric Utne. I had never heard of Eric Utne and felt pretty sure that I didn’t want to.

The contents contained a pitch for a new magazine that, I had to admit, was more beguiling than most. I do not need a new magazine. I do not want a new magazine. I give magazines away by the cartonful. Hundreds of them. Magazines are stacked high on all our tables. We have at least two dozen unread Smithsonians. Good stuff, I know, but reading Smithsonians takes time that could otherwise be devoted to sex and violence on TV.

It turned out that Eric Utne publishes something called Utne Reader, which is not a very attractive title. But its production method is appealing.

Utne says the magazine has a staff of four, plus “Nina, my bemused wife; a Buddhist physics professor, a socially responsible philanthropist; a Jungian dreams analyst; a candidate for the U.S. Senate; an anarcho-punk theorist; an organic herb farmer; plus a dozen media junkies who lend a hand.”

“For two months,” Utne says, “we all read and clip whatever we find of interest in more than 1,000 alternative publications. Political exposes. How-to lifestyle pieces. Money advisories. Interviews with unusual people. Stories about the environment, survival, shenanigans in high places. Any and everything that you’re not likely to find in mainstream newspapers and magazines.” (Actually, I think you can find all of that stuff in The Times, in abundance, except maybe input from an anarcho-punk theorist, whatever that is.)

Then, near deadline time, “we all get together in an all-night gathering that’s come to be known as the Alternative Press Reading & Dining Salon. We discuss what we’ve read. We talk. We argue. We nibble on pizza and popcorn. And by dawn’s early light, we’ve got it--what we feel is one of the most exciting, yet useful, magazines you can read today. . . .”

An explanatory sheet begins with the kind of facts you can expect to find in Utne Reader. “If you believe that exercise will help you live longer . . . that small companies are better to work for than big ones . . . and that you can’t possibly make money while maintaining your principles . . . there’s something you should know. It won’t. They aren’t. You can. . . .”

Gee, I read just the other day that every step you climb adds four seconds to your life. And what about “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and “honesty is the best policy?”

It adds: “If revelations like these contradict axioms you learned at your mother’s knee, there are more surprises to come. Just open Utne Reader to any page. Overturned truisms. Shattered shibboleths. Debunked bromides. Truth!”

As I say, I’m intrigued by the Utne Reader’s editorial methods, but I’m not sure I want to base my perceptions of our society on a journal put out by the likes of a Buddhist physics professor, a bemused wife, a Jungian dreams analyst, an organic herb farmer and an anarcho-punk theorist sitting around all night digesting pizza and clippings from 1,000 alternative press journals.

However, if it’s shattered shibboleths you crave, the address is Utne Reader, P.O. Box 1974, Marion, Ohio 43306.

Unfortunately I’ve lost my post card for a free copy.