Georgia lives on a farm in Ontario, Canada with her former creative writing instructor. One fall, on impulse, she decides to take a ferry across to …
Best New Yorker Articles of 1989
Explore 52 featured picks from The New Yorker's 1989 issues.
52 picks · 52 issues · Top author: Mark Danner (3)
Most featured section: A Reporter at Large
Featured Picks
The writer recalls events of 24 years ago. Her father, an Army officer, is in charge of the missile batteries at Fort Niagara where the family also lives. …
PROFILE of Paul Shaffer, the bandleader & musical director of NBC's "Late Night With David Letterman." Tells how Howard Shore called Shaffer for the …
Alex Prud’homme meets the New York City soup chef on whom “Seinfeld” ’s “Soup Nazi” is based.
PROFILE of Daphne Park, born in England in 1921. She grew up in Africa. At age 11 her parents sent her to England. After a distinguished & eventful career …
PROFILE of moviemaker Errol Morris. During the past twelve years he has directed and released three films: "Gates of Heaven", about two pet cemeteries in …
Caitlin is a former actress who travels from NYC to Honduras to visit with her estranged daughter, Holly, who is engaged to a man named Brandon. Caitlin …
A CRITIC AT LARGE about the life & career of cartoonist Ralph Barton, who committed suicide at age 39, in 1931. Barton's drawings, like his signature, …
Part II of Ian Frazier’s series on America’s Great Plains region, where the writer rambled for six thousand miles in 1989, logging his encounters and observations.
The narrator returns home to her mother's house in Argus, North Dakota. Inside the shades are drawn because it's over 100 deg. & the fans are …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the famine in the Sudan. Its principal cause is a civil war between the south & the north. Both sides hamper relief efforts and …
Judith Thurman reads the many biographies of Charlotte Brontë and her family, from Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1857 book to Rebecca Fraser’s in 1988.
A REPORTER AT LARGE about a pie expedition that the writer takes with her dog, Tazzie, through the country's, back roads tasting pies at various out of…
REPORTER AT LARGE about Uruguay & their repressive military dictatorship which lasted 12 years beginning in 1973. In 1903 Jose Batlle y Ordonez became …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Uruguay. Their repressive military dictatorship ended in 1985 after 12 years. Victims of human rights abuses wanted to settle …
PROFILE of Dr. Jonathan Miller, who was a cast member of the "Beyond the Fringe" revue, & a neuropsychologist. "I never had a sense of humor," he has …
REPORTER AT LARGE about gold mining around the town of Battle Mountain, Nevada, where, during the last 8 years, over 40 million ounces of gold has been …
When he is playing, the cellist’s movements have a logic and beauty of their own, David Blum writes, in this Profile from 1989.
Dovlatov meets Filimonov at a conference of industry newspaper editors in Leningrad. Filimonov wants him to play the lead in his underground film about …
Calvin Trillin on the illusionists Penn & Teller. “Penn & Teller had a relationship with the audience that was less characteristic of magicians than of street performers—which they both once were.”
REPORTER AT LARGE about Mozambique. The main cause of the countrywide suffering is the war being waged against the govt. (called Frelimo) by the …
Menytioned in REPORTER AT LARGE about Mozambique. Frelimo is the nationalist movement whose guerrillas defeated the Portuguese to win Mozambique's …
Poetry by Robert Pinsky: “George Herbert, your descendant is a black / Lady in South Carolina. Her name is Irma / And she inspected my shirt.”
The Medusa, one of four vessels that set sail for Senegal in 1816 in June, hit a reef about a month later. A raft carrying 50 men was abandoned by the four…
PROFILE about the virtuoso drummer Louis Bellson, who at 65 is not only the last of the great swing drummers but the most commanding of all living …
The narrator, who is from Antigua, has been an au pair for Mariah's children now for the last three months. When spring finally arrives, she feels like…
Wallace White’s 1989 Profile of the marine biologist and explorer Sylvia Earle.
REPORTER AT LARGE about penguins. At San Diego's Sea World writer visits a laboratory where she observes king-penguin chicks, six weeks old. When their…
REPORTER AT LARGE about the cultivation of sugarcane in south Florida. Most of it is harvested by hand by men from the West Indies who live in barracks on …
REPORTER AT LARGE about harvesting sugarcane in south Florida. The cutters are almost all West Indians; most are Jamaicans & they are badly treated. In the…
REPORTER AT LARGE about the investigation into the murder of Hector Felix Miranda, a Mexican journalist. He wrote a column for the weekly independent …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the U.S. Coast Guard & the changes caused by the service's chronic underfunding. Writes about the identity crisis within the …
Long story in letter form about a college literary professor in England who marries a woman writer he has been studying throughout his career. She's 44…
Six months ago, Walter, an actor who just broke up with his girlfriend of 3 years, sublet the first floor of a house in Boston from Dwight & ANita, a …
Nathan Cone, a 42 year old poet who works at a think tank called Concordance Institute in Connecticut, has just learned through his colleagues that …
The author visits a downtown courtroom and Los Angeles County Fire Department headquarters during the hottest and driest time of the year for the desert city.
The writer was born in Edinburgh in 1918 & she reminisces about her preschool life up to the age of five. Sometimes she compares her early infancy with …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the surge of national awakening in Estonia. Estonia was initially the most adventurous of the SOviet Union's 15 republics in …
The narrator, Dan, is over at his best friend's apt. in San Diego. HIs friend, Mack, is dying of AIDS and Dan has come over, as he often does, to help …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the fires in Yellowstone National Park last summer & the controversy that ensued over the park's natural-burn policy which …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Burma, ruled for 27 years by a brutal & xenophobic military dictator, Gen. Ne Win. It is a country of 40 million people. Hardly, a …
Vast hordes of barbaric Huns invaded Chicago, Illinois & & took over the savings & loan offices while President Bush was playing badminton in Aspen. Bush, …
PROFILE of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Wishing to be always the person seeing, never the person seen, he has preserved his incognito so well that …
PROFILE of Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer. Writer began to rummage through Cartier-Bresson's old papers--scrapbooks of clippings and photographs &…
The narrator is a Soviet Jewish emigre living in London, where he meets a Soviet tourist. The tourist keeps his eyes averted from him. The narrator …
Ingrid Sischy on a photography show that changed America.
Profile of film collector Herb Graff.
REPORTER AT LARGE about the Presidential elections in Haiti which ended in bloodshed & led to the rise of the Army-backed Leslie F. Manigat. The …
A REPORTER AT LARGE about Haiti and Papa Doc Duvalier. Tells about the history of Haiti from the time it was settled through to the ascension of …
A REPORTER AT LARGE about Haiti after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier. By the end of his 15-year rule, Jean-Claude and his wife had become the ultimate …
It's a week past New Year's. Liza & Dutton, her friend of ten years, are in a bar in Chicago. Dutton, who is 43 years old is in love with a 20 year…
REPORTER AT LARGE about South Africa and its election on Sept. 6 in which blackscould not vote. At one end of the political spectrum is the Conservative …