The article attempts to combine the view of the literary and art magazine (thick magazine) as a book and as a type of mass media. The article deals with book-based approaches to magazines as books. The magazine, as an object of study of journalism, is given less attention in the article. The main emphasis is made on the fact that, in different historical periods, literary and art magazines are characterized by the features of either books or media. This phenomenon, like the perception of magazines as books in general, has not been studied sufficiently. Literary critics of the formal school spoke about the thick magazine as a book in the 1920s. Taking into account their works, the scheme of "fluctuations" of essential characteristics of the literary and art magazine is made. During the transition periods (the first third of the 19th century, the first third of the 20th century, the end of the 20th century), magazines approach books in their essence. Magazines do not have time to respond quickly to changes in the situation (newspapers perform this function), the number of journalistic works in them decreases, and magazines begin to play the role of an "ark" to preserve the literary tradition and, at the same time, a platform for the formation of a new literary language suitable for the description of new realities of life. During the periods of stability, when a new literary language is formed, with its help, journalism again comes to the fore in thick magazines, and magazines become a public tribune. This did not happen at the end of the latest of these transition periods: the texts of journalistic genres moved to the Internet pages, which turned out to be a more suitable platform for journalism in the new communication space. Personal blogs became analogues of mono-magazines and actually monopolized this genre. As a result, literary and art magazines, whose dualistic nature (book and media) had always been their hallmark, were divided into two types: emagazines, close to the media, and paper magazines, close to the traditional book. At the same time, traditional thick magazines, which have not decided on one of the proposed ways of development and have not formed their actual strategy in the new conditions, are in a "suspended" state, having dropped out of the media clip and losing their role as books. In conclusion, the article presents the main characteristics of the literary and art magazine as a kind of book: a complex structure and a special selection of texts, which together represent the current state of the elite literature of today and tomorrow; the function of the magazine as an indicator of the state of book culture as a whole.
