Out of Earshot
Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
A Near Miss
[ F E B R U A R Y • 2 0 0 4 ]
Don DeLillo: “He didn’t think of himself as ‘Lee Harvey Oswald.’ The state and the media, in response to significant criminal acts, will sometimes include the subject’s middle name as a way of imposing an institutional gravity on the matter. This practice, in Oswald’s case, produced an early stereotype, a drifter with three first names and a pale, spare, squinting look – someone superficially familiar.”
[ O C T O B E R • 1 9 8 3 ]
How the mythology of JFK’s assassination sustains the mythology of his career.
Read “The Life of Kennedy’s Death” by Christopher Lasch
[ J A N U A R Y • 1 9 7 5 ]
“The world of assassination theory is dense with non sequiturs, misunderstood evidence, wild claims.”
Read “Sirhan’s Gun” by Betsy Langman and Alexander Cockburn
Republicans Convene
[ N O V E M B E R • 1 9 6 8 ]
Norman Mailer at the 1968 Republican National Convention: “The country was in a throe, a species of eschatological heave.”
Read “Miami Beach and Chicago”
[ S E P T E M B E R • 1 9 8 0 ]
Outtakes from the 1980 RNC.
Read “The Hollywood Right” by Earl Shorris
[ S E P T E M B E R • 1 9 5 2 ]
“He was only a man making a speech, outworn and at the extreme limit of irresponsibility and anti-climax, talking himself into nonentity and leaving the convention with neither the ‘keynote,’ the unity, nor the conflagration he had been expected to produce.”
Read “The End of the Stalwarts” by Bernard DeVoto
The New Satanic Panic
[ A U G U S T • 2 0 2 4 ]
“Roughly half of America believes in the existence of demons and the ability of such spirits to possess humans.” Read Sam Kestenbaum’s cover story in our latest issue, then exorcise the Harper’s archive.
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 9 0 ]
“If you think there is a problem with Self-styled Satanists in your community–and there almost certainly is; the situation is epidemic–start with the schools.”
[ M A Y • 2 0 1 7 ]
On Ghana’s “prayer camps” for mental health patients: “Suddenly, an instrumental flute version of “Amazing Grace” issued from the apostle’s iPhone. ‘Yes?’ he answered on speaker. Into the room exploded a female voice, screeching and making guttural noises. ‘The woman has a demon,’ Asante whispered to me. The apostle brought the phone to his ear and conducted the rest of the call privately. We could hear him speaking in tongues. When he hung up, he went on ignoring us.”
Read “A Prayer’s Chance” by Brian Goldstone
Bastille Day
[ A P R I L • 1 8 8 9 ]
The sentimental poetry of a young Maximilien Robespierre.