(FORTUNE Magazine) – A few months before Theodore Levitt, 63, took over as editor of the Harvard Business Review in 1985, a disgruntled reader of 30 years wrote to cancel his subscription. The journal had become, in his opinion, ''drab, shallow, dense, irrelevant, and meaningless.'' Lest there be any doubt about where he was ) coming from, he added, ''Life is too short to spend it with you.'' Whoa. When Levitt, the former Harvard business school professor known for his theories of marketing myopia and market globalization, moved into his new job, he dashed off a reply. He offered the reader, a Mr. Morse, a free two- year subscription and an invitation to critique the changes that he was making. ''A magazine is a little like marriage,'' says Levitt. ''People get tired of the same damn thing all the time.'' So he added some spice: cartoons; shorter, less intimidating articles with fewer footnotes and ''less foreplay'' before the pitch; and a section for lighter, humorous fare. A few weeks ago he received another letter from Mr. Morse. ''The job to be done was of the order of cleansing the Augean stables, and might have taken the diversion of the Charles River to do it,'' he wrote. ''You've done it.'' Not all of Levitt's reviews have been so favorable. Academics complain that he is repositioning the Review to appeal increasingly to corporate managers rather than to scholars. ''There is a real trade-off between substance and accessibility. I think he's gone too far in that regard,'' says David Vogel, editor of Berkeley's California Management Review. ''I don't like the Review as much as I used to.'' Many on the editorial staff who did not share Levitt's vision have left. Levitt remains unfazed, insisting that a phoenixlike revival was called for: ''The life of a magazine is periodic euthanasia,'' he explains. ''Euthanasia is important for survival.''