January 1980
In This Issue
Explore the January 1980 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Taiwan: An Unmarried Country
A year after U.S. recognition of Communist China, Taiwan is going its independent and prosperous way.
Bigger Than Politics
Why Almost Everyone Is Wrong About Gold
Letter to a Dead Artist
A Wig
Great Moments in American Journalism (Or, the Sorrows of Gin)
Guatemala: The Hard Line
While all around it dictatorships weaken and fall, Guatemala’s government maintains its ironfisted rule.
The Making of Guys & Dolls
The love, labor, and lament that go into the making of a play or a musical comedy are repaid aplenty when the result proves to be as great as the one that brought Damon Runyon’s mugs and dames alive on the Broadway stage. The show was made into a hit movie and, three decades after the curtain first went up, is still performed frequently all over the country and in many other parts of the world. The man who wrote the book for it—as well as for numerous other Broadway successes—tells how it was done.
The Unkindest Therapy of All
Over the years electroshock has been used to “treat" such disparate complaints as backache, ulcers, hysteria, grief, colitis, and homosexuality. Electroshock is still in use today in many leading psychiatric hospitals—despite the fact that patients fear this violent and dangerous therapy, and that the doctors who believe in it cannot explain what it does or how it works.
Out There: (For Charles Levendosky)
The Man Who Loved Benny Leonard Too Much
The Literature of Replenishment: Postmodernist Fiction
Is postmodernist fiction an art form to take seriously, or is it pretentious nonsense from quirky writers who can’t say what they mean? A novelist sometimes accused of postmodernism in his own work here examines the phenomenon and concludes that, well, yes and no.
The Ruination of the Tomato
It wasn’t a conspiracy, it was just good business sense—but why did modern agriculture have to take the taste away?
1980: The Clichés Are Coming
A Dinner for Six
Casaba Melon Chicken Soup, Mock Quenelles Veal Olives Thorndike Potatoes Fried Eggplant, Julienne Tango Salad Pimento and Cheese Fritters Pineapple Bombe
Notes on the Present, Deeply Boring, Academic Peace
The Executioner's Song
A Coat of Varnish
A Stopping Place
Looking for Work
Sara Teasdale
Return to Babylon
Gothic Painting
To Smile in Autumn
Byron's Letters and Journals
The Wise Virgins
Peale's Museum
Less Than Words Can Say
A Flight of Butterflies
Winslow Homer's Magazine Engravings
Bulfinch's Mythology
The Atlantic Puzzler
