I hadn’t picked up Harper’s for months, and the September issue reinforces my inclinations. The “annotations” column has descended to analyzing a chain e-mail. (“The medium of the chain letter. . . has always succeeded by playing to certain weaknesses in its readership, chief among them paranoia and gullibility,” writes Jon Lackman. “In this way is the medium perfectly suited to the contemporary right.” I guess left-wingers don’t get chain letters. We all know they are immune to paranoia.) I should report that there are two good things in the issue: Guy Davenport’s review of the new Borges biography, and Mark Grief’s brilliant, over-the-top piece on gyms.