Can a Dolphin Really Commit Rape?
Nature isn’t cruel—it’s just careless.
Book Excerpts
Getting Lost Makes the Brain Go Haywire
In caves and labyrinths, humans’ cerebral navigation equipment is mostly useless. That can spark panic or free the mind.
The Tricky Ethics of Transplants for Addicts
Many programs require liver recipients to be six months sober, but that policy may funnel organs away from the people they’re most likely to help.
The Making of Gone With the Wind: Part Ii
From the casting of Scarlett O’Hara to Rhett Butler’s “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” all of David Selznick’s actions were based on the idea that any methods were justified to make GWTW come out the way he wanted. Herewith the rest of the story of the filming of a classic, together with some second thoughts about the movie by five contemporary American film critics.
Pop Mom Moon
Rabbit Angstrom, the faded basketball hero of Rabbit, Run, is ten years older, and perchance wiser. These scenes from his life are drawn from Rabbit Redux, Mr. Updike’s forthcoming novel.
Auden in the Looking Glass
A writer who believes that a writer’s private life “is, or should be, of no concern to anybody except himself, his family and friends” is not likely to write an autobiography. Auden’s Commonplace Book, soon to be published by the Viking Press, undoubtedly is the nearest thing to an autobiography he will ever produce. Here are some samples from it. The exercise is followed on page 67 by an appraisal of Auden’s life and work by the distinguished English critic Frank Kermode, a contributing editor of the Atlantic.
An Unfinished Woman
Lillian Hellman, who grew up in New Orleans and New York, made her reputation as one of America’s great playwrights before she was thirty. THE CHILDREN’S HOUR took New York by storm when it opened in 1934, ran for 691 performances on Broadway, and played in every major city in the United States. Her second triumph, THE LITTLE FOXES, which starred Tallulah Bankhead on the stage and Bette Davis in the film version, portrayed the selfishness and hypocrisy of a turn-of-thecentury Southern family and established Miss Hellman as a major American dramatist. The author of twelve plays in all and many film scripts, Miss Hellman has now written a book of extraordinary fascination and power. It is the memoir of the private, not the theater’s, Lillian Hellman, and in advance of its publication by Little, Brown and Company in June, we are proud to present a substantial excerpt. Originally planning to publish in two successive issues of the ATLANTIC, we decided that these pages from, AN UNFINISHED WOMAN deserved to be read at one sitting. We believe our readers will agree.