Table Of ContentCover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction · David Remnick
PART ONE · RECKONINGS
A Note by George Packer
Silent Spring · RACHEL CARSON
Letter from a Region in My Mind · JAMES BALDWIN
Eichmann in Jerusalem · HANNAH ARENDT
In Cold Blood: The Corner · TRUMAN CAPOTE
The Village of Ben Suc · JONATHAN SCHELL
Reflections: Half Out of Our Tree · RICHARD H. ROVERE
PART TWO · CONFRONTATION
A Note by Kelefa Sanneh
It Doesn’t Seem Quick to Me (Desegregating Durham) · KATHERINE T. KINKEAD
An Education in Georgia (Integrating a Public University) · CALVIN TRILLIN
March on Washington · CALVIN TRILLIN
Letter from Berkeley (The Free Speech Movement) · CALVIN TRILLIN
The Price of Peace Is Confusion · RENATA ADLER
The Put-On · JACOB BRACKMAN
Letter from Chicago · RICHARD H. ROVERE
Harvard Yard · E. J. KAHN, JR.
PART THREE · AMERICAN SCENES
A Note by Jill Lepore
Letter from Washington (The Cuba Crisis) · RICHARD H. ROVERE
An Inquiry into Enoughness (Visiting a Missile Silo) · DANIEL LANG
Letter from Washington (The Great Society) · RICHARD H. ROVERE
Lull (Walking Through Harlem) · CHARLAYNE HUNTER
Demonstration (A Biafra Rally) · JONATHAN SCHELL
Hearing (Feminists on Abortion) · ELLEN WILLIS
Notes and Comment (Woodstock) · JAMES STEVENSON AND FAITH MCNULTY
Notes and Comment (The Assassination of John F. Kennedy) · DONALD
MALCOLM, LILLIAN ROSS, AND E. B. WHITE
Views of a Death (J.F.K.'s Televised Funeral) · JONATHAN MILLER
Notes and Comment (The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.) · JACOB
BRACKMAN AND TERRENCE MALICK
Life and Death in the Global Village · MICHAEL J. ARLEN
Letter from Washington (The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy) · RICHARD
H. ROVERE
PART FOUR · FARTHER SHORES
A Note by Evan Osnos
Though Tribe and Tongue May Differ (Nigerian Independence) · EMILY HAHN
Letter from Havana · HANS KONINGSBERGER
Letter from Vatican City · XAVIER RYNNE
On the Seventh Day They Stopped (Six Day War) · FLORA LEWIS
Letter from Prague · JOSEPH WECHSBERG
The Events in May: A Paris Notebook · MAVIS GALLANT
PART FIVE · NEW ARRIVALS
A Note by Malcolm Gladwell
Portable Robot · F. S. NORMAN, BRENDAN GILL, AND THOMAS MEEHAN
Telstar · LILLIAN ROSS AND THOMAS WHITESIDE
The Big Bang · JOHN UPDIKE
Touch-Tone · GEORGE W. S. TROW
Sgt. Pepper · LILLIAN ROSS
Apollo 11 · HENRY S. F. COOPER, JR.
Ornette Coleman · DONALD STEWARD AND WHITNEY BALLIETT
Cassius Clay · A. J. LIEBLING
Glenn Gould · LILLIAN ROSS
Brian Epstein · D. LOWE AND THOMAS WHITESIDE
Roy Wilkins · ANDY LOGAN
Marshall McLuhan · LILLIAN ROSS AND JANE KRAMER
Joan Baez · KEVIN WALLACE
Twiggy · THOMAS WHITESIDE
Ronald Reagan · JAMES STEVENSON
Tom Stoppard · GEOFFREY T. HELLMAN
Simon & Garfunkel · JAMES STEVENSON
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi · VED MEHTA
The Who · HENDRIK HERTZBERG
PART SIX · ARTISTS & ATHLETES
A Note by Larissa MacFarquhar
A Tilted Insight (Mike Nichols & Elaine May) · ROBERT RICE
The Crackin’, Shakin’, Breakin’ Sounds (Bob Dylan) · NAT HENTOFF
Paterfamilias (Allen Ginsberg) · JANE KRAMER
Levels of the Game (Arthur Ashe, Clark Graebner) · JOHN MCPHEE
Days and Nights with the Unbored (World Series 1969) · ROGER ANGELL
PART SEVEN · CRITICS
A Note by Adam Gopnik
All Homage (Breathless) · ROGER ANGELL
After Man (2001: A Space Odyssey) · PENELOPE GILLIATT
The Bottom of the Pit (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) · PAULINE KAEL
False Front or Cold-War Concept · LEWIS MUMFORD
The Nineteen-Sixties: Time in the Museum · HAROLD ROSENBERG
Television’s War · MICHAEL J. ARLEN
The Bombs Below Go Pop-Pop-Pop · MICHAEL J. ARLEN
Sweet Birdie of Youth (Bye Bye Birdie) · KENNETH TYNAN
The Theatre Abroad: London · KENNETH TYNAN
Off Broadway (Oh! Calcutta!) · BRENDAN GILL
Newport Notes · WHITNEY BALLIETT
Rock, Etc. (Packaging Rock and Post-rock) · ELLEN WILLIS
Rock, Etc. (Woodstock) · ELLEN WILLIS
Whither? · WINTHROP SARGEANT
Our Invisible Poor (Michael Harrington's The Other America) · DWIGHT
MACDONALD
Polemic and the New Reviewers · RENATA ADLER
The Author as Librarian (J. L. Borges) · JOHN UPDIKE
The Fire Last Time (William Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner) · GEORGE
STEINER
The Unfinished Man (Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint) · BRENDAN GILL
The Whole Truth (Joyce Carol Oates's them) · L. E. SISSMAN
PART EIGHT · POETRY
A Note by Dana Goodyear
The Heaven of Animals · JAMES DICKEY
Tulips · SYLVIA PLATH
Next Day · RANDALL JARRELL
The Broken Home · JAMES MERRILL
The Asians Dying · W. S. MERWIN
At the Airport · HOWARD NEMEROV
Second Glance at a Jaguar · TED HUGHES
Endless · MURIEL RUKEYSER
Moon Song · ANNE SEXTON
Feel Me · MAY SWENSON
PART NINE · FICTION
A Note by Jennifer Egan
The Ormolu Clock · MURIEL SPARK
A & P · JOHN UPDIKE
The Hunter’s Waking Thoughts · MAVIS GALLANT
The Swimmer · JOHN CHEEVER
The Indian Uprising · DONALD BARTHELME
The Key · ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
Acknowledgments
Contributors
David Remnick
IT’S DIFFICULT TO think of William Shawn, the reserved and courteous man who
edited The New Yorker from 1952 to 1987, as a figure of the sixties. If he wore a
tie-dyed T-shirt, he kept it well hidden. Most days, he wore a dark wool suit, a
necktie of subdued color, and a starched white shirt, sometimes adding one or
two sweater vests to the ensemble when it was chilly. He was soft-spoken and
addressed his colleagues with the formality of an earlier time. Nearly everyone in
the office referred to him, even when he was out of earshot, as “Mr. Shawn.” He
was already well into middle age when that decisive decade came roiling in, and
although there is no definitive way to fact-check this, I would bet the house that
he did not partake of the hallucinogens that helped define the era.
Yet this volume represents a magazine that, under his guidance, became more
politically engaged, more formally daring, more vivid, and more intellectually
exciting than it had ever been or wished to be. The world was changing, and
Shawn was determined to change The New Yorker. In the early days of the
magazine, Shawn’s predecessor, Harold Ross, had preferred to minimize politics
in what he referred to as a “comic weekly.” When Dorothy Parker wanted to
write a piece about the civil war in Spain that was sympathetic to the Loyalists,
Ross told her wryly that he would print it, but only if she would come out in favor
of Generalissimo Franco. “God damn it,” he told her, “why can’t you be funny
again?”
Shawn, who had been Ross’s longtime deputy, helped deepen the magazine
with its coverage of the Second World War, but The New Yorker tended to steer
clear of the most vexed of many political questions, including that of race. There
were exceptions, including “Opera in Greenville,” Rebecca West’s 1947 account
Description:The third installment of a fascinating decade-by-decade series, this anthology collects historic New Yorker pieces from the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century—including work by James Baldwin, Pauline Kael, Sylvia Plath, Roger Angell, Muriel Spark, and John Updike—alongside new assess
