Atlantic Reads: Screen People With Megan Garber
Staff writer Megan Garber and Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic’s executive editor, discuss Garber’s new book, Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves Into a State of Emergency.
Fiction
Books
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The Lost Idealism of Heartland Rock
The genre of Bob Seger and John Mellencamp reached across the ideological spectrum in a way that seems unimaginable today.
The Books That Take Revenge, Centuries Later
A new history of the Red Scare prompts the question: Does literature still have enough influence to bring down the powerful?
What To Read
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Eight of the Most Fascinating Biographies to Read
Each is animated by the author’s love—for their subject, for language, and for pushing the boundaries of what the genre can do.
Six Books That Simply Must Be Talked About
These six books demand discussion—with a pal, a date, or a book club.
Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World
Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.
Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read
These titles are worth picking up, even if you have only a moment to spare.
Une Petite Piqûre
This is the latest adventure of our pseudonymous correspondent in France whose reports are a frequent feature of these pages.
Sadie
A veteran of the Navy now in his twenty-fourth year, PETER MATTHIESSEN was graduated last June from Yale, where he is teaching creative writing in a part-time capacity. “It’s a fine job,” he says. “One of its great advantages is the opportunity which it affords me for my own writing. This is primarily the story of one man,” he continues. “His behavior is not intended is a comment on the South.” On this piece John Farrar commented, “A remarkable story, a very fine story indeed. It has skill, authenticity, atmosphere, restraint.”
The Weather Prophet
A native Texan and a partner in the Houston law firm of Baker, Bolts, Andrews, and Parish, DILLON ANDERSONis establishing a fresh reputation as a writer of short stories. He is contributing to the Atlantic a series of adventures in the lives of two happy hobos who fortunately do not take themselves too seriously. The Editor captured the first story on his visit to Houston in 1948; this is the fifth, and there are more to come.
Mr. Wilson and the Gulls
ALMA STONE makes her first appearance in the Atlantic with a story about her native state. She was born in East Texas and was educated at Southern Methodist University and Columbia. “At various times “ she tells us, “I have taken cash in a restaurant. sold books, taught English to foreigners. and worked for a Chinese news agency and, briefly, for the Methodists.”Miss Stone is now living in New York, working on the staff of Sarah Laurence College Library, and writing in her spare time.
The Everlasting Quartet
As one of the founders of Story magazine, to which he devoted more than a decade of intensive effort, WHIT BURNETThelped to discover such writers as William Saroyan, Tess Slesinger. Allan Seager, Richard Wright, and Eric Knight. In the evenings which he takes off from his writing and editing. he is an impassioned member of a string quartet, an addiction which explains how he came to urite the delightful fantasy that follows.
The Far Lands
For thirty years James Norman Hall has made his home in the South Seas. Over the years his imagination has continually been challenged by the question of hou the Polynesians ever came to these peaceful but remote islands. From his knowledge of the natives and their legends, he has recreated the epic story of the Tongon Clan, who were lovers of peace and who had gone to sea in their great outrigger canoes in search of the Far Lands promised them by Tané, the god they worshiped. After storm and starvation a remnant of the clan was driven ashore on Kurapo, an island peopled by the Koros, a clan who worshiped war and who would hare massacred the survivors were it not for the intervention of their high chief, Vaitangi, who gave the enfeebled strangers sanctuary on the eastern side of the island.
The Ghost of Maiden Abbey
One of Britain’s most able career diplomats, ARCHIBALD CLARK KERR, Lord Inverchapel, was Ambassador in Baghdad, 1935-1938, in China, 1938-1912, in Moscow, 1942-1945, and in Washington, 1946-1948. He entered the British diplomatic service in 1906, served in the Scots Guards in the First World War, and then with distinction in the Foreign Office. Now he has retired to his native heath in Scotland, where he farms and occasionally adds to his collection of true ghost stories. This is the second in the series he is writing for the Atlantic.
Horace Q. Ball Lor Governor
A Texas lawyer and a native son, DILLON ANDERSON of Houston is contributing to the Atlantic a series of short stories about two itinerant bums who operate strictly on a catch-as~catch-can basis. This story of their summer sashay into Texas politics is the fourth in the series. and there are more to come. In Texas, where, as everyone knows. Democratic nomination to state office is tantamount to election, the real contest occurs in July and August when the primaries are held. The general election in the fall is only a formality.
Finish, Good Lady
Born on Long Island in 1917, and educated at Groton, Yale, and the University of Virginia Law School, Louis AUCHIINOLOSS enjoys all the activities of a New York lawyer and still manages to reserve time for his steady writing. His first novel, The Indifferent Children, was published in 1947, and his second is now in progress. His long short story, “Maud,” won an Atlantic “First” Award in 1949.
Old Century's River
OLIVER LA FARGE came to his ivriling by way of archaeology. He had began to publish his short stories while an undergraduate at Harvard’ but it was on his expeditions to Arizona’ Mexico, and Guatemala that his sympathy for the native Indian found depth and substance. His first novel, Laughing Boy, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 and marked him at once as an artist and an authority in his field. During the tear, he served in the Air Transport Command, and his history of that resourceful outfit is one of the best of the war books.