Writer describes the different banks she has used. Her first account was a perquisite of a job she had at a genteel nonprofit establishment. The staff got …
Best New Yorker Articles of 1984
Explore 53 featured picks from The New Yorker's 1984 issues.
53 picks · 53 issues · Top author: Orville Schell (4)
Most featured section: Fiction
Featured Picks
The writer's parents have been divorced for eleven years, and she spends Saturdays with her father who lives on West End Avenue in NYC. The first …
REPORTER AT LARGE about book-banning in school libraries. At stake is the principle of local control over education versus student rights under the First …
REPORTER AT LARGE about China. The Chinese Communist Party has declared Mao Zedong's political line defunct. Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, who…
The writer's father died in Lincoln, Illinois, in 1958, after his father's 80th birthday and the writer's 50th. The day after he was buried, …
REPORTER AT LARFE about an eleven-day walk through the Ituri Forest in Zaire, a big country on the western side of sub-Saharan Africa. It was formerly the …
Victoria Feldman is at a large dinner party given by her cousin, Sophie Aspair, who is known as the last Mrs. Aspair, although there are others. Sophie was…
Harrison, age 60, woke up one morning as a not quite slight earthquake shook the room. His wife did not stir. She was much younger than he, and found his …
In Manhattan in 1942, six-year-old Sean and his sister Mary find their father unexpectedly waiting to take them home from school. He has been in a mental …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Yugoslavia. The country has passed through numerous buffetings while fiercely maintaining its unique status as an independent …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Yugoslavia, a country which seems determined to work out its own fate methodically according to its own schedule and devices. This …
Fiction by Milan Kundera, from 1984: “He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural.”
REPORTER AT LARGE about Harvard Law School. There is a deep, and at times bitter, division in the faculty-a division that began with a challenge from the …
Offering Vestrand's Extelopedia In 44 Magnetomes Vestrand Books Company New York-London-Melbourne MMXI Parody of encyclopedia advertisements. "Vestrand…
PROFILE of Mario Cuomo, sworn in as governor of N.Y. on Jan. 1, 1983. He is being touted as one of the Democratic Party's prospects for national …
PROFILE of Mario Cuomo, governor of New York. Tells about his first budget, presented early in 1983 to the state legislature. A combinsation of cutbacks …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock, adopted by farmers in the early fifties not only to prevent and treat diseases …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock to prevent disease & promote growth. This use has become so widespread that …
An 18-year-old high school senior misses a week of school because his dog, Keds, got killed outside of the A& P. He watches his sister wash her hair with …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the Ivory Coast, W. Africa, a former French colony, which is generally held to be a political & economic success. Since its …
PROFILE of David Steel, a 46-year-old Lowland Scotsman who is the Member of Parliament from Tweeddale, Ettrick, and Lauderdale, and is the leader of a …
PROFILE of several of Houston's immigration lawyers.
A nineteen-year-old American boy was on a French ship, sailing from America to Europe in 1959--his first trip abroad. He didn't speak French very well,…
Horowitz is a divorced, thirty-two-year-old man, working for an electronic toy manufacturing company. He has been entrusted with the job of buying a new …
Wheat is the corn of history
REPORTER AT LARGE about the M.T.A. (Metropolitan Transportation Authority), under the chairmanship of Richard Ravitch. The job was offered to him by …
Writer had many options before he made his purchase but in the end he decided on the Cairn Terrier. Writer makes a detailed comparison of the Cairn Terrier…
REPORTER AT LARGE about Morocco. King Hassan II is a sovereign of unmitigated omnipotence who has seven palaces. This nation of 21 million is the …
Talk story about the making of a record of the new Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical "Sunday in the Park with George." Writer spoke with Thomas Z. …
John McPhee reports on the family-practice movement and the return of the local, family doctor in rural Maine, at a time when medical specialists pervaded American health care.
REPORTER AT LARGE about writer's visit to Tennessee in May to see his old friend Chet Atkins. Writer and Atkins played golf with a banker from Columbia…
Frank Castle, a 35-year-old Catholic journalist, left N.Y. on an Italian liner and went to the Villa Garibaldi, in Fumicaro, Italy. He was attending a …
When the writer was young, the small Jewish community of his town of Kimberley, South Africa, and the nearby town of Bloemfontein decided that they should …
PROFILE of Robert W. Wilson and Arno A. Penzias, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978. It was for their joint discovery at Bell Labs, made in 1964…
PROFILE of Stanley J. Segalla, of Canaan, Connecticut, 59 years old, who is an aviation acrobat or aerobat, by avocation. He earns his living as a …
Writer says that the coverage of the XXIII Olympiad overlooked certain small, unofficial things that people all over the country did to sustain the mood of…
PROFILE of abstract painter Frank Stella, who many consider one of the most important living artists. His work has never really appealed to a large public …
Monty Gault was the local small-time builder, joiner & handyman in Dryfask, Scotland. When the Hendersons moved into Orr Mount they called him for help. …
Byron was Tom's son from his first marriage. It was the second year that he was staying with Tom and Jo in their summer house in Vermont. In the school…
REPORTER AT LARGE about Pakistan. The Pakistanis have provided refuge to nearly three million Afghans fleeing the fighting in Afghanistan. The refugees …
Reb Pinchos, a Talmudic scholar, was the head of a small yeshiva in Krasnik, Poland. He was married to Greena Chasha& had one son&2 daughters, …
In their youth, in India, Farid and Farida had been exquisite, small-boned, elegant, quick in mind and body. They fell in love and went to college together…
REPORTER AT LARGE about writer's 6-day journey to Dijon, France, on a ship called Janine, which is owned & operated by Floating Through Europe, Inc. of…
A humor piece about the selection of England's poet laureate. In England, when people discuss poetry they're talking business--big business. At the…
Story narrated by Annie John; she is 17 years old, and is leaving Antigua to go to England and become a nurse. She is planning never to return to Antigua. …
PROFILE of the potato. There is no staple-food plant that has not affected the outcome of the strife on one battlefield or another. If the South had had …
REPORTER AT LARGE about China and Deng Xiaoping's open door policy, which the Chinese leader initiated in the late 1970s. This new policy has …
John McPhee’s 1984 profile of a Maine bush pilot who is also named John McPhee.
Twelve drawings representing signs of the zodiac, each with a caption telling of future events, all of which are calamitous. Most of them also represent …
PROFILE of British photographer Norman Parkinson, 71. When not busy photographing lovely, famous, rich, or royal people all over the world, he runs a pig …
Writer's father was in the Army, and her family moved a lot. Her father, who had been in the Second World War, taught her younger brother MacArthur how…
Sam and Jenny wanted eggs for breakfast, so Sam went down the hill outside their house and bought them from Old Man Sandoval. They'd agreed on …
PROFILE of Lola Szladits, curator of the Berg Collection housed at the New York Public Library. It is formally known as the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg …