THE ATLANTIC MAKES WAVES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100010082-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 22, 2004
• Sequence Number: 82
• Publication Date: October 12, 1970
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 200419/~RDP 8-01314R000100010082-4
THE. PRESS
The Atlantic Makes Waves
Gazing from a window of the At-
lantic magazine's offices in Boston's Back
Bay area recently, Writer Ward Just no-
ticed a couple sprawled across the hood
of a Volkswagen, "apparently in the
final throes of making love." It was not
so long ago that the height of public ro-
mance in the neighborhood was after-
noon tea at the nearby Ritz Hotel. Per-
spectives have obviously changed on
the Atlantic's brownstone doorstep.
on heroism: "1 remember all the mov-
ies, Down Patrol, and stuff like that. Per-
haps I wanted to be a hero myself. As
a sergeant, I quit counting at 127 dead.
To kill a person is murder, but to kill
a man in battle is honorable. It's the mys-
tique of war. The supreme risk, see. A
seven or a crap." At West Point three ca-
dets grin when asked to name their
war heroes. One says: "There aren't
any heroes any more."
More Fahrenheit. To herald the first
installment of "Soldierthe Atlantic
has its first two-page foldout cover in
its 1,356-issue history, a striking col-
lage by Larry Rivers. The cover is not
the only physical innovation. Under
Manning's direction, there has been
more use of white space and illustrations.
Harpers, the traditional rival of the
Atlantic, has made similar changes un-
der its imaginative editor in chief, Wil-
lie Morris. And as each magazine con-
tinues to break away from old patterns,
comparisons are made. Partly because
(Morris is highly visible on the New
York scene and partly because 11W-per's
looks more daring (lots of leg and very
little miniskirt in a Women's Lib
cover last February), many people in
the publishing business regrind Harper's
as the "hotter" book, But if "hot"
means popular with advertisers, the At-
lantic has more Fahrenheit. Including
the October issue, the Atlantic has car-
ried 444 pages of ads this year, up
from 381 last year; Harper's has run
395, down from 412. In circulation, Har-
per'.s leads, 379,210 to 326,347. Nei-
ther is a notable nmoneymaker.
Globe Editor Winship supplies a Bos-
ton view of the two: "It's a little unfair
to compare them, They 'seem to have a
different mission. Harper's is very live-
ly and an courant. It's even going a bit
kinky. The Atlantic still retains its her-
itage of civility, literary writing and care-
ful reporting." Adds Ward Just, who
has written for both magazines: "Man-
ning hasn't sacrificed durable quality
for the passions of the nionment. He is
not afraid to be dull at times."
Neither Manning nor new Managing
Editor Michael Janeway is afraid to be
controversial. Planned for Atlantic's De-
cember issue is an article probing the
shadowy relationship between the FBI
and the late Martin Luther King. Clear-
ly, the magazine has come a long way
since Ellery Sedgwick became propri-
etor-editor in 1908. The Atlantic, he de-
termined, should be like a good dinner
party, attended by interesting people
with interesting conversation. Says Man-
ning: "To duplicate the simple diet of
the dinner table is no longer enough."
quotes a much-dAyM~,6drFbfSI'1&6
(Somewhat less vividly, they have also
changed within the 113-year-old mag-
azine. Long noted as a high-quality lit-
erary journal, the Atlantic has become
less genteel and more aggressive. The
change has been gradual, but it dates per-
ceptibly from 1966, when Robert Man-
ning became editor in chief. Says Tom
Winship, editor of the Boston Globe:
"Bob Manning, who's a modern man,
has moved Atlantic right out of Oliver
Wendell Holmes into the 20th century."
Given to tweeds and a kind of prod-
ding impatience, Manning joined the At-
lantic in 1964 as executive editor. He
had been an Assistant Secretary of State
for Public Affairs in the Kennedy and
Johnson Administrations, a senior ed-
itor at TIMa, Sunday editor of the old
New York Herald Tribune, and a re-
porter for United Press, Associated Press
and his home town Binghamton (N.Y.)
Press. When he went to Atlantic, he
noted the danger "of having a beau-
tiful tool without any cutting edge."
Mystique of War. Manning has not
turned the Atlantic's back on literature.
Where its pages were once filled with
the contributions of Emerson, Long-
fellow and Thoreau, they now carry
the works of Saul Bellow, James Dick-
ey and Lillian Hellman. Neither has it
lost its touch for literary coups. Some
of the earliest fiction of Ernest Hem-
ingway and Edwin O'Connor appeared
in the Atlantic. In recent years it has car-
ried the first musings of Svetlana AI-
liluyeva after her defection and a pre-
view of Scientist James Watson's best-
selling book, The Double Helix. Its pages
also have offered distinctive, often dis-
tinguished reportage on current affairs
-the war in Viet Nam, Women's Lib-
eration, reform in the universities, life
in a black ghetto, the trial of Dr. Spock.
In its current issue, Atlantic begins an
ambitious two-part study of the U.S.
Army by Ward Just, called "Soldiers."
The first installment is not so much
a portrait as a compelling kaleidoscope
of sketches. With vignettes from West
Point, Fort Lewis and Fort Hood
("known as Fort Head for the quantity
of marijuana available and used"), Just
depicts an institution at bay, its old val-
ues under siege, its pride wounded. He