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.
Fiction
Books
See All
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?
Who Came Up With That?
Contrary to what we think of as intellectual property, most ideas are difficult to trace back to one human mind.
What To Read
See All
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.
The Blue Image
CRARY MOORE is the pen name of a former Bostonian who moved to Cambridge after her marriage two years ago. ”Here" she writes, ”YOU see. and marvel at, the everyday doings of tremendous intellects. You also meet their wires.” Her story of an anniversary gift, and of haw it catalyzed mind and heart, is one to remember. It marks Miss Moore’s fourth appearance in the Atlantic.
The Wreath
FRANK O’CONNOR, the Irish author who has taught several courses on the writing of fiction, was ashed how he approached his own short stories. Said Mr. O’Connor, “With me it’s a difficulty of temperament. Mine is lyrical, explosive. I write a story with a feeling of slight regret for poor Shakespeare’s lack of talent and wake up with a hangover that makes poteen look like cold water. Then, having cursed life and forsworn literature, I start rewriting. If I can work up the Shakespeare mood often enough I may get it right in six revisions. If I don’t I may have to rewrite it fifty times. This isn’t exaggeration.” Mr. O’Connor is now living in the United States. His most recent collection, More Stories, was published last year by Knopf.
Saturday Night
A native New Yorker, MARJORIE HOUSEPIAN grew up near Gramercy Park not far from the Armenian section where most of her Armenian relatives still live. In her early teens she spent two years abroad; attended the New York public schools and graduated from Barnard College in 1944. She is now working as secretary to the president of Barnard, and has been studying writing at Columbia under Martha Foley. Her first appearance in the Atlantic was in the January issue, when we published “How Can You Shame a Donkey?” We are happy to have her back with this new story.
The Kidnaping of Kamlon
An American married to a British civil servant. AGNES NEWTON KEITH has spent twenty years of her maturity in the islands of the South Pacific. From 1934 until 1942 she and her husband made their headquarters in Sandakan, North Borneo, and from those years came her prize-winning Atlantic book, Land Below the Wind. Her great war book, Three Came Home, was the painful, compassionate account of her three years in a Japanese prison camp. When she and Harry had recovered their health, they returned to Asia as representatives of the U.N., and from their tour of duty in the Philippines has come the source material for her new and illuminating volume, Bare Feet in the Palace, of which this is an episode.
Hunting Moon
Each autumn WILLIAM WISTER HAINES,the playwright and novelist, joins his doctor brother on a trek to northern Canada, where they track down the myriads of wild fowl that are then making ready for their migration. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania who wrote his first two novels, Slim and High Tension,about the men who risk their lives working close to “hot wire,”Mr. Haines has written the scenarios for many successful pictures; and his own play, Command Decision,was a hit on Broadway, in the films, and as a book.
The Inventor and the Actress
Author of My Name Is Aram, My Heart’s in the Highlands, The Human Comedy, and The Bicycle Rider in Bevery Hills, WILLIAM SAROYAN has been writing since he was thirteen years old and has published more than thirty books and plays. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1939 for The Time of Your Life but refused the $1000 because he “already had $1000 at that time, and because commerce has no right to patronize art.”He accepted the Drama Critics’ Circle Award for the same play, “because there was no money involved, and because I knew some of the critics and wanted to meet the others at the free dinner.”He lives in Malibu, California.
I Don't Wanna Be No Mate
A graduate of Exeter and Harvard, RICHARD BlSSELLknows our inland waterways — the Ohio, the Monongahela, and the Mississippi (on all of which he worked as a mate or a pilot) — as well as Mark Twain knew them. From this river experience came the source material for his first novel, A Stretch on the River. He is the coauthor of The Pajama Game, a highly successful musical comedy based on his second novel, 7½ Cents; and his third, High Water, made its debut last autumn under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint.
The Academicians
An engineer who studied at Harvard and the University of Tulsa, JOSEPH WHITEHILLtwo years ago turned to full-time short-story writing. Moved by his Navy memories and by his respect for the work of Joseph Conrad, Mr. Whitehill wrote a sea story called “Able Baker” which we published as an “Atlantic First.” The story’ below, he says, is his respectful bow “to the impossibly beautiful prose of Tsak Dinosen, the mistress of us all.”
A Love Affair
A graduate of Queens’ College, Cambridge, T. H. WHITE published his first novel, Loved Helen, in 1926 when he was a young schoolmaster at Stowe. He scored his first major success in this country with The Sword in the Stone; and then, when he had resumed writing after the war, he again hit the target of the Book-of-the-Month Club with his novel, Mistress Masham’s Repose. Atlantic readers will remember his charming story. “The Fairy Fire,” which appeared in the November issue.
Voices
The grandson of the great naturalist, who was himself educated at Eton and at Balliol at Oxford, ALDOUS HUXLEY had already published four books when in 1921 he captured the imagination of readers here and in England with his novel, Chrome Yellow. Since then he has written thirty books—fiction, essays, and biography—including such best sellers as Point Counter Point, Brave New World, and Eyeless in Gaza. In recent years he has resided in California, whence comes this new satire.