Best New Yorker Articles of 1983
Explore 52 featured picks from The New Yorker's 1983 issues.
52 picks · 52 issues · Top author: Helen Drees Ruttencutter (2)
Most featured section: A Reporter at Large
Featured Picks
PROFILE of Andre Previn, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Tells about his TV series "Previn and the Pittsburgh" shown from 1976 to 1979 when the …
PROFILE of Andre Previn, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, conductor emeritus of the London Symphony Orchestra, and the future (1985) music …
PROFILE of financier Felix George Rohatyn. Since 1960, when he was 31, he has been a partner in the investment-banking firm of Lazard Freres & Co. He has …
Narrator's mother supports an agency that sends her a list of the world's political prisoners who are known to be in danger for their lives. She is…
Narrator is writing a final-exam question when she hears a ringing in her earsNshe doesn't know if it is from diet pills or too much tea or too much …
PROFILE of Lord Carrington, former British Foreign Secretary, who resigned Apr. 5, 1982, the first casualty of the duel with Argentina over the Falkland …
Ian Frazier profiles Poncé Cruse Evans, the Texas-born author of “Hints from Heloise,” an international household-hints column, founded by her mother, Heloise, in 1959.
PROFILE of Astrid Lindgren, Swedish writer of children's books, especially known for the three "Pippi Longstocking" books. Her books have been …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the yearly 4-week-long World Series of Poker, held at Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. Writer watched the 1981 …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the annual World Series of Poker held at Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas. Tells, in detail, about Doyle Brunson, twice …
Four drawings in which people have faces like animals. The first shows a bird woman sitting on a porch with two small dog men. The second shows a dog man …
PROFILE of Rubin Levine, 65-year-old native New Yorker and street violinist. He owns three violins: a Heverlein, a Schuster, and a steel-stringed Roth. In …
PROFILE of Peter and Iona Opie, British scholars of children's folklore. Writer accompanies Iona on her weekly visit to the Liss County Junior School, …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Poland. In the fall of 1982 writer came to witness martial law in Warsaw. Solidarity had been permitted to exist officially for 16 …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Poland. After sixteen months, Solidarity's official existence ended with the coup on Dec. 13, 1981, which established martial …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Sun City Center, Florida, an affluent retirement community 25 miles from Tampa. It is an unincorporated town of about 8500 people, …
REPORTER AT LARGE about methane, the principal constituent of natural gas. As a result of the energy crisis the major fuels of the U.S. have come under …
Harry Lang met Fay at a corporate sensitivity workshop in San Antonio last year. They have spent the last 6 months having long & wistful phone …
The writer remembers meeting a female rebel for the first time. He was nineteen and a proofreader for a Yiddish literary magazine. The editor sent him to …
PROFILE of lawyer Simon Rifkind. Douglas, a classmate and longtime friend of Rifkind's, wrote in his book, "The Court Years," that Rifkind was the …
Fiction, from 1983: He looked at Ilka and said, “We’re standing here, side by side, but how do I know what you see?”
PROFILE of Jean Riboud, chairman of Schlumberger, Inc., a multinational corporation dealing mainly with oil drilling. With assets of $16 billion, there…
PROFILE of Jean Riboud, chairman of Schlumberger, Inc., a multinational corporation whose principal business is oil drilling. Describes Riboud's …
Sarah, a pretty, light-skinned black girl from Philadelphia, graduated Harvard at 21. When her father died of a stroke, she discarded and loathed …
REPORTER AT LARGE about a trip along that portion of the Iron Curtain that forms the border between East and West Germany. Writer's idea was to look as…
REPORTER AT LARGE about the writer's continuing trip along the border between East and West Germany, ending near Czechoslovakia. He started in East …
The author returns to her Aunt Lucy’s house in Ahoskie, North Carolina, in search of a patchwork quilt.
PROFILE of Jean Bach, the woman who produces the"Arlene Francis Show," a radio interview program that has been heard 5 days a week over WOR for the past 23…
Writer visits his grandmother's farm in Southwestern Ohio, where she has lived all her life. After his grandfather died she bought a horse named …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which came to an end last winter after 9 years of deliberations, when …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the concluding sessions of the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea, which ended last December. The treaty produced by the …
PROFILE of Roy Eisenhardt, president of the Oakland A's baseball team.
Seven drawings with captions which tell how the writer returned to vist Buckwood Falls, where he found it was just as he remembered it. Little had changed …
The writer is in a trench, building the foundation for an addition to his house-digging, shovelling, measuring, laying concrete blocks. Looking up, he sees…
Fiction, from 1983: “I sat there facing her, but at the same time it was as if a part of me, or all of me, were contained in her mouth, crunched, torn shred by shred.”
Writer imagines Ceil, his mother, who died when he was 2. He tends to feel an almost theatrical fright when he is near a subject that hints of her. …
PROFILE of King Hussein of Jordan.
REPORTER AT LARGE about writer's visit last fall to Kansas City, his home town, to see the American Royal livestock show. A Grand Champion steer is …
Several love stories. Valerie and her mother, Marilyn, are having lunch at a restaurant in Gainesville, Florida. Valerie's father died last year, and …
A REPORTER AT LARGE about substituting ethanol for gasoline. The oil embargo of the OPEC countries in the early 70's caused the domestic cost of oil …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the writer's local pub during a five-month stay in London.
PROFILE of the five Brennan brothers (Pete, Tony, Paddy, Mickey, and George), who are all superintendents of luxury apartment houses on the east side of …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the Swiss Army. Writer joined a group of the Tenth Mountain Division getting ready to patrol a sector of the uppermost Rhone. This …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the Swiss Army. It is a militia composed mainly of soldiers who spend a few weeks a year in uniform and otherwise pursue civilian …
Miss Vera Brown was the only pretty teacher at Central School, where she taught 5th grade. A boy in her class had a crush on her, thinking that her voice …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the ailing 80-year-old Kate Quinton (pseud.) & her treatment for the first half of 1982. She was a patient at Lutheran Medical …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the ailing 80-year-old Kate Quinton (pseud.) Although she lived with her daughter Claire, she needed a caretaker to assist her at …
Part 1 of Janet Malcolm’s 1983 story about the doyen of the Sigmund Freud Archives, Kurt Eissler, and his falling out with his former protégé, Jeffrey Masson—a plucky scholar with an unorthodox view of Freud.
Fiction by Donald Barthelme: My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says.
PROFILE of Issey Miyake, a Japanese fashion designer, and report on Japanese fashion. Writer went to a fashion show featuring the clothes of Miyake on the …
Pauline Kael reviews Brian de Palma’s classic gangster film “Scarface,” starring Al Pacino, as the Cuban drug lord Tony Montana, and Michelle Pfeiffer.