August 1966
In This Issue
Explore the August 1966 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
The Obscenity Business
The tortuous, not altogether articulate attempt of the Supreme Court to deal with the growing traffic in obscenity and pornography must be examined in detail if its latest decision, scrutinizing the motives of authors, editors, publishers, and booksellers, is to be understood. Mr. Epstein, a vice president of Random House, takes on that exacting task in this article and demonstrates that the issue at stake is not only individual freedom but the responsibility with which we use that freedom.
Mark Twain, or the Ambiguities
"When we remember that we are all mad," Mark Twain wrote in his notebooks, "the mysteries disappear, and life stands explained."
Houston's Shackled Press
A cautionary tale about journalistic conflicts of interest
White-Collar Pill Party
A good eye, a sharp ear, and quiet personal research characterize Bruce Jackson's examination of American manners and morals. This report on a spreading social habit is a long step ahead of journalism's routine portrayal of what has come to be called the drug scene
A Few Notes From California
The Hypocritics
In a spring issue Peter Davison look up the phenomenon of the review of hook reviews. Now FELICIA LAMPORT, author of SCRAP IRONY, examines the review reviewer’s associate, the anti-reviewer.
In the Faculty Lounge
The Neurotic's Notebook
Israeli Mosaics..
Theatre Recording Society
Record Reviews
The Peripatetic Reviewer
Reader's Choice
Potpourri
The United Nations
California
Is Schweitzer Dead?
CORNELIUS SCIPIO, under another name, participated in the recent Albert Schweitzer International Convocation at Aspen, Colorado.
On Dismembering Hemingway
Many critics are making a fuss over A. E. Hotchner's PAPA HEMINGWAY, book buyers are making it a best seller, and the great writer's widow is making it the cause of a lawsuit. Here is what an acknowledged Hemingway scholar makes of it. Mr. Young is Research Professor of English at Penn State and author of ERNEST HEMINGWAY, a book-length study first published in 1953 and translated into several foreign languages and issued in a revised edition in 1965.
A Spoonful of Nothing
How to create a boom in Lucky Mints and a cult in malted milks is here described by Sam Toperoff of New York, a teacher of English, a poet of considerable originality, and a prose writer whose first short story the ATLANTIC is proud to publish.
Easy
Suez
Things That Were Still Alive
What's Up With Taxes
The 1964 federal tax cut to stimulate the economy had barely begun to be felt when economists and government officials began talking about the possible necessity of raising taxes again in order to curb inflation. The discussion of ups and downs may seem academic now that the costs of the war in Vietnam, rather than economic theory, provide the reason for tax increases. But it is pertinent to the New Economics and its approach to the manipulation of taxation to perform tasks other than the financing of government. In this essay, the chairman of the department of economics at the University of New York at Stony Brook explains why.
Nerved Up
Inhabited by a Cry: The Last Poetry of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath has been lhe subject of more attention than any other young American poet in recent years. Her posthumous book, ARIEL, is here considered by Peter Davison, whose new collection of poems, THE CITY AND THE ISLAND, will be published by Atheneum this autumn.
In the Region of Ice
The author, though, still in her twenties, has already won a reputation as one of the most accomplished young writers in America. Her short stories hare appeared in many magazines, and hare been included in the past three O. Henry collections. A graduate of Syracuse University, Miss Oates teaches English at the University of Detroit. Her third book, UPON THE SWEEPING FLOOD, a collection of short stories, has just been published by Vanguard.
The Sheep-Child
If Love Becomes a Game
Auden on Poetry: A Conversation With Stanley Kunitz
Because poets persistently complain that poetry is badly taught, the Academy of American Poets and Stanley Kunitz have organized, inconjunction with the New York City Board of Education, a series of dialogues between poets. In this edited conversation, Mr. Kunitz, poet and teacher, discusses with one of the most versatile men of English letters the thoughts, acts — and occasional accidents — that go into good poetry.
