Fiction, from 1990: “Somehow the party had begun to trigger in her a host of things, memory upon memory, like hands placed on top of one another in a childhood game.”
Best New Yorker Articles of 1990
Explore 53 featured picks from The New Yorker's 1990 issues.
53 picks · 53 issues · Top author: Garrison Keillor (3)
Most featured section: Profiles
Featured Picks
REPORTER AT LARGE about Syria whose Pres. is Hafez al-Assad, whose dream, like Saladin's, has been to unite the Arabs drive the outsider from Islamic …
A REPORTER AT LARGE about Balochistan. It is a province in southwest Pakistan, & is a brooding and melancholy place. Its martial people fought the British …
Fiction, from 1990: “I used to dream about my mother, and though the details in the dream varied, the surprise in it was always the same.”
Vince is best friends with Harry, who makes toys out of strange odds and ends his boss buys cheap at auction. They share everything in common from tastes …
Shouts & Murmurs by Calvin Trillin: Because of a computer error, the early editions on Wednesday misidentified the person arrested for a series of armed robberies of kitchen-supply stores on the West Side of Manhattan.
Bryan Di Salvatore’s 1990 profile of country musician Merle Haggard. “I give ’em my music, that’s what matters.”
Lipsha Morrissey is a Chippewa Indian on a reservation in N. Dakota. He plays bingo in a quonset hut with many other Indians. He is obsessed with a van …
Joan Didion on the history of the L.A. Times.
Leonard is a cowboy who thinks he should give up this life style. After his horse, Old Dan, steps on Leonard's foot and breaks it, Leonard sits down …
Nat Hentoff’s 1990 Profile of Justice William Brennan. “On certain fundamental questions of individual liberty Brennan has so profoundly redefined the framework in which the issues are discussed that he may well be the most influential member of the Court in this century.”
PROFILE of artist Siah Armajani, He is an American citizen, naturalized in 1967, but he was born & raised in Teheran, and, like many Iranians, he often …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the U.S. Merchant Marine. Writer accompanied a merchant mariner named George Anderson Chase. He had known Andy for several years & …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the U.S. Merchant Marine. Writer accompanied second nato George Anderson Chase on the S.S. Stella Lykes on a voyage to the West …
REPORTER AT LARGE about the U.S. Merchant Marine. Writer accompanied second mate George Anderson Chase on the S.S. Stella Lykes on a voyage to the West …
REPORTER AT LARGE about human rights violations in the Philippines. Writer travelled with Sidney Jones & Jemera Rone, who were investigating the …
Fiction, from 1990: “My guess is that spring is a natural way of suggesting adolescence as something one should start to go through again.”
PROFILE of English conductor Jeffrey Tate. When he was 11, he had been accepted by the Farnham Grammar School, where he studied until he was 18. He thus …
PROFILE of James Addison Baker III, Secretary of State and close friend of Pres. George Bush.
REPORTER AT LARGE about the Pacific forest. Today the effects of almot 50 years of intensive logging in the publicly owned forests of the Pacific Northwest…
REPORTER AT LARGE about an open adoption in which the birth mother & the adopters select each other. In the traditional arrangement the baby is turned over…
PROFILE of choreographer Peter Anastos. What choreographer enjoys the unique distinction of having been a prima ballerina? For 3 years, from 1975 to 1978, …
PROFILE of Hans Deichmann, 82, a German industrialist, who was anti-Nazi. Writer begins by relating that in Mar., 1942 Hans was on his way to Rome as the …
After the death of his elderly mother, the adult Joey returns to the farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, where she had been born and spent most of her life. …
In the winter of 1949, Julia Bogle, an 18-year-old English girl who has come with her parents to live in a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, relieves her …
REPORTER AT LARGE about politics in the Soviet Union, especially the meetings of the Congress of People's Deputies in March, which elected Gorbachev …
In Cairo, Milton Viorst visits the novelist Naguib Mahfouz, whose symbolic novels explore Egypt’s struggle against colonialism.
The narrator lives with her two children aboard their own aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Fortitude. The children, Dennis and Cherry (who is only 12), fly …
Saturday, May 8, 1830 finds the General of Colombia surrounded by a small and diminishing band of supporters. And in the final days of his reign, the …
The story of one night spent alone in a cornfield. One week away from turning fifty, Clare decides at a rest stop along Interstate 80 in Iowa to leave her …
PROFILE of actress Linda Hunt, 45, who is 4'9" tall & weighs 80 pounds. When people Hunt has worked with in the theatre or in the movies talk about …
Tells about budget & tax negotiations between, the President and the Democrats. The President's Jun. 26 acknowledgement of the obvious--that new taxes …
The narrator tells how he marketed his movie adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's novel "Nausea." While taking a meeting at the Polo Lounge, planning what …
REPORTER AT LARGE about Laos. The Ho Chi MinhTrail there was central to America's 9-year secret war in Laos, orchestrated by the C.I.A. & directed from…
REPORTER AT LARGE about the consequences of not having a will and the search for an heir. On Mar. 22, 1984 Edward Devlin died without a will. On Nov. 12, …
PROFILE of J. Carter Brown, the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. WRiter listens to him present his ideas for an exhibition …
A REPORTER AT LARGE about the drug traffic in New Haven, CT, and especially about the black underclass. The illegal drug business enjoyed a spectacular …
A columnist at a Canadian newspaper dreams about babies as the holidays draw near, in this short story by Margaret Atwood, from 1990.
Fiction, from 1990: “I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you.”
PROFILE of Earl Strom, 62, who was the dean of the National Basketball referees. He retired last June. Over the past 33 years Strom presided over the …
Former rocket scientist & investment banker, now a circus clown.
PROFILE of Torquil Norman, a British aviator and toy manufacturer. Tells how he was fired by the board of Berwick Timpo, a toy company he bought and built …
Writer gives an account of a train derailment which killed two people in a suburb of San Bernadino, CA, and caused a subsequent rupture of a fuel pipeline …
The goddess Hera's lawyer, Alan, meets Zeus at a cafe in Rhodes, to persuade him to stop his insatiable philandering. Zeus turns him into a pitcher of …
PROFILE of Japanesefilm actress Hideko Takamine. She was the favorite actress of Mikio Naruse & Keisuke Kinoshita, two of the most esteemed directors of …
The story is headed by a quotation from a letter in the Village Voice; the letter quotes a homoerotic paean to Ernest Hemingway's muscular physique, …
Judith Thurman reviews A. S. Byatt’s “Possession,” an epistolary novel about the romance of literary research.
REPORTER AT LARGE about Admiralty Island in southeast Alaska. An Indian frontier town called Angoon is the only town there. Most of its 630 inhabitants are…
On the day of abundance, the author takes a moment to confess that life is good.
A PROFILE of labor leader Dennis Rivera... As a Local 1199 executive vice-president, he contrived to establish a highly improbable but decidedly effective …
PROFILE of Richard Benson, photographer & printer of photographic books. In 1986 he received a 5-year MacArthur Foundation grant of $212,000. He has …
PROFILE of harpist Daphne Shih. She has a trio, Hellman's Angels(Eddie Berg on guitar, Lyn Christie on bass). She has appeared every Tuesday(when she …
PROFILE of Vitaly Korotich, editor of a Soviet weekly magazine called "Ogonyok". In just 4 1/2 turbulent years under Korotich "Ogonyok's" circulation …