April 1990
In This Issue
Explore the April 1990 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Feminism and Abortion
Pro-choice arguments, the author says, reflect the ambitions, hypocrisies, and contradictions of contemporary feminism
Hollywood: The Ad
The techniques and the cartoon-like moral vision of television advertising are exerting more and more influence over American moviemaking
American Medici
Myself and Marco Polo
The Living Legend of Saint Patrick
Yucatan
Don't Tell the Grown-Ups
Don't Tell the Grown-Ups
Franz Werfel
Driving Through Cuba
Monterrey Is Ours! The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana 1845--1847
The Bathroom
The Awakening of the Soviet Union
The Puzzler
Word Watch
Here are a few of the words being tracked by the editors of The American Heritage Dictionary, published by Houghton Mifflin. A new word that exhibits sustained use may eventually make its way into the dictionary. The information below represents the first stage of research, not the final product.
The April Almanac
Notes: In the Beginning..
Famous first words
Tokyo: Japanese Bootstraps
A few modest suggestions to improve Japan’s relations with the rest of the world
Europe: "Unity" Spells Trouble
A common language won’t work in Europe, where language stirs nationalistic pride and people know the advantages of not understanding each other
Venice: Job's People
Far from the ethnic strife in Armenia and Azerbaijan, an obscure order of monks tends to a people’s soul
The Frank Review Interviews Interviews Hugh Frank [No Relation]
HUGH FRANK LIVES with his second wife outside Savannah, Georgia, in a remodeled Colonial. In their connecting living room and gallery is a massive metal sculpture by their friend Hughes Jimmy; opposite, tall windows open to rich magnolias. Asked if he placed his paintings leaning against the light-gray wall so that they might become three-dimensional objects, Frank says, “No; I haven’t bought hooks.” His studio is thirty minutes into the country. He likes the distance. He spoke more than expected. He considers himself unusual in this respect. “Sculptors,” he says, “are illiterate and unintelligible.” Hugh Frank is neither. His attempt to shave a square mile of women’s legs near Hankville, Utah, captured the nation’s attention, and while some may view it as overhyped media event or bad conceptual art, Frank disagrees: “I was able to tap into some deep-rooted problems in America.” Because Frank shuns tape recorders, two court reporters recorded our interview about what Time has called “the art spectacle of the decade.”
745 Boylston Street
Contributors
The Goats of Summer
Magnification
Outside
Tom Wheeler had much to forgive, but very little time to act or be understood
Lies and Evasions
A Moral Choice
How would a woman who habitually makes choices in moral terms, the author asks, come to the decision to have an abortion?
Great Britain
Spain
Camilo José Cela received the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the death of Francisco Franco, he served as a senator in Spain and helped write a new Spanish Constitution. He is also the author of the recently reissued travel book Journey to the Alcarria.
Italy
The internationally famous fashion designer Giorgio Armani rarely travels far from his native Milan, where he lives and works.
Yugoslavia
Joško Marušić is an animator and the art director of Zagreb Film’s famous Studio of Animated Film— known for, among other things, the biennial World Festival of Animated Films to which it plays host. Marušić also illustrates books, writes screenplays, teaches animation, and draws a popular weekly political cartoon. A native of Split, he has lived in Zagreb since 1970.
Britain
Throughout 1990, Glasgow, Scotland, will reign as the Cultural Capital of Europe, a title conferred by the European Parliament, In response, the city will present an ambitious year-long schedule of concerts, museum exhibitions, cultural festivals, and performances by visiting artists—all under the leadership of Robert Palmer, a curator and theatrical producer, who is the director of the 1990 Festivals Office.
Austria
Dr. Harald Leupold-Löwenthal, a lifelong resident of Vienna, is the president of the Sigmund Freud Society and the director of the Sigmund Freud Museum.
Ussr
Alexander “Sasha” Frish, a ringmaster with the Moscow Circus, was born in Chelyabinsk, in Siberia, and now resides in Moscow.
Ireland
Noel Pearson, a native of Dublin, is the director of the Abbey Theatre. He is also the producer of Jim Sheridan’s film My Left Foot and Sheridan’s forthcoming The Field.
Germany
Rainer Hildebrandt is the founder and director of the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall Museum.
Scandinavia
Knud Hedegaard is the director of Legoland, a twenty-five-acre amusement park in Billund, Denmark. The park is built around such Brobdingnagian Lego constructions as a forty-foot-high sculpture of Sitting Bull, made with just over one-and-a-half-million Lego bricks.
Greece
Mikis Theodorakis is a composer and musician, and a political activist as well. He is perhaps best known abroad for having written the theme to Zorba the Greek. Theodorakis has served off and on as a deputy in Greek parliament for twenty-five years and was elected most recently last November, as an independent. Raised in Crete, he now resides in Athens and Paris, spending summers near Corinth.
Cruise-Ship Captains Name Their Favorite Ports
