December 1966
In This Issue
Explore the December 1966 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Hawthorne: The Artist of New England
Nathaniel Hawthorne died more than hundred years ago, a despondant and frustrated man. Today, says Mr. Kazin, his work stands as a school classic whose meaning for our time has yet to be established. This essay on Hawthorne and his "profound imaginative world" is drawn from an introduction to Mr. Kazin's Selected Short Stories Of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Evelyn Waugh Faces Life and Vice Versa
Mr. Osborne worked for the Luce Magazines for twenty-three years and now free-lances in Washington
Joining Up
Charlie Jack needed samething, or someone, committed to him, and the Army might be the answer. All he had, to do was pass the physical, something he’d tried before and failed. The author, a 1960 graduate of Barnard College, has lived for the past six years with her novelist husband, David Shelzline, and two small children in a forest ranger’s tower in the Oregon woods. This is her first published story.
The Dead
Strikes and People: A Proposal
Recent strikes, such as those that shut down New York’s subways and grounded most of the airlines last summer, have caused men on all sides to feel “there maut be a better way!" This proposal for a new way grows out of the author’s many years of experience in labor-management affairs. He now teaches graduate students of industrial administration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
Roller Derby Anyone?
Rhodesia
Better Roads, Worse Drivers
A collection of opinion on motoring in the United States by RICHARD BENSTEDSMITH of London, editor of MOTOR, and KEN PURDY, a writer on automotive affairs.
The Dalmatian Coast on the Cheap
Records at Half Price
The Peripatetic Reviewer
Reader's Choice
Books for Children: A Christmas List
The author of several juveniles, Mrs. Jackson is children’s book editor for the San Francisco CHRONICLE.
Potpourri
The Purge in China
Brazil
Washington
The Americans in Thailand
What is really happening in Thailand and why are we expanding our military forces there? After all the talk about increased economic and social help for South Vietnam, why are we doing next to nothing for the 3 million. Vietnamese who live in the backlash of war and the squalor of slums in the capital city of Saigon? These situations have much to do with the costly and escalating American involvement in Southeast Asia, but they have been little told until now. In the following report on the American presence in Thailand, Maynard Parker combines his experience as a journalist (LIFE magazine) and his recent Army service as a public information officer in Thailand. Mr. Parker wrote this article after completing his military assignment and before rejoining LIFE as a Far Eastern correspondent based in Hong Kong.
The Tragedy of Saigon
This report on the life and half-life of the cockpit city of South Vielnam marks Miss FitzGerald’s farewell to Saigon. For the last ten months she has lived there, writing articles about the war and its side effects which have appeared in the New York TIMES Sunday Magazine and New York’s VILLAGE VOICE.She is twenty-six and a graduate of Radeliffe College. Before going to Vietnam, she wrote for the New York HERALD TRIBUNE.
A Story
The Russians of Rebecca West
A scandalous case of espionage inspired THE BIRDS FALL DOWN, the first crossbreeding between Dame West’s interest in crime and latent for fiction. The consequences are examined here in detail by Mrs. Ellmann, a teacher, writer, and critic.
Working With Toscanini
“Several years ago,” says Mr. Haggin, “a musician who had played in the NBC Symphony with Toscanini observed that all the books about Toscanini had been written by outsiders [this was a year before the appearance of the superb book THIS WAS TOSCANINT,with text by Samuel Antek of the NBC Symphony and photographs by Robert Hupka], and that there was need of a book by the insiders — the musicians who actually rehearsed and played with Toscanini &emdash;that would provide future generations with an authoritative statement of what his greatness was.”Mr. Haggin has interviewed a number of those musicians, and has converted their statements, recorded on tape, into monologues, to be published as a book next spring. He writes on music for the HUDSON REVIEW and his most recent book is MUSIC OBSERVED (Oxford). William Carboni. whose monologue follows, now plays in the New York Philharmonic.
Toscanini Recordings
Whistlin' Dixie: The Southern Governors in Caucus
This small album of word pictures tells much about the look, the sound, and the works of seventeen Southern governors in conference assembled. The notes were collected by Mr. Ford, the novelist and short-story writer, during September’s Southern Governors’ Conference at Kentucky Dam Village, Gilbertsville, in western Kentucky. Mr. Ford is at work on a collection of short stories and a new novel.
The Several Blessings of Ta-Nien Wang
Hua-ling Nieh was ten years old when her father was killed by the Chinese Communists. She disguised herself and fled from Peking to Canton and then to Taiwan, where she lived for fifteen years before coming to the United States. She has published several books in Chinese and English, but this is her first published work in the United States.
Partition
The Los Angeles Police
Despite its wide and justified reputation for controlling conventional crime, the Los Angeles Police Department has been slow in drawing lessons from the 1965 disturbances. The department s narrow definition of effective police work must be broadened considerably if future racial outbreaks are to be avoided. Paul Jacobs is the author of numerous books and articles on social issues and is on the staff of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institulions in Santa Barbara.
