The Movies The Best Place for It by Richard Powers. One night after the movies, in Nov. of 1978, an Illinois high-school boy, Eddie Hobson, Jr., meets a classmate named Sarah, also 17. He had gone out that night, to escape the tension of his family life, namely his father, who is seriously ill. The young friends share mutual...

Fiction Dreams by Saul Steinberg. Four drawings, all uncaptioned. The first one shows a two-wheeled cart being pulled by a huge ostrich-like bird. The second is identified as being Madrid by a sign over an arch. It shows a street scene with a bellboy from the Ritz Hotel carrying packages; a woman &...

A Reporter at Large II-THE HOMELESS AND THEIR CHILDREN by Jonathan Kozol. REPORTER AT LARGE about the homeless. Writer tells about a woman he calls Laura, who lived at the Martinique Hotel with her 3 children. She eventually was so overwhelmed by her problems, including an inability to read, that she fled into prostitution, leaving the children with her mother. In 1985...

Dance Rumba by Susan Lardner. Janet talk story ostensibly about rhumba lessons with Fred Astaire dance school... Janet was looking for something again. Writer made herself comfortable in her living room. "I think I may have lost it," she said. "It's very annoying when you get to be my age & you only have a...

The Talk of the Town Thumbs by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about the Canadian Mist Whiskey International thumb-wrestling championship at Gleasons Arena in Brooklyn. ...Canadian Mist Whiskey had a pretty good year. ("Of all the distilled spirits brands, Canadian Mist is the nation's 4th largest seller, & the #1 selling Canadian Whisky." Source: "Key Points on Canadian Mist...

The Talk of the Town Rosa and Lotti by Judith Thurman. Talk story about an underground German filmmaker, Rosa von Praunheim, who is premiering his latest film, "Anita: Dances of Vice," in New York. Film depicts the life of Anita Berber, a nude dancer during the Weimar period of Germany and who was part of a German group of sexual revolutionaries...

Concert Records / Popular Music by Mark Moses.

Books by Terrence Rafferty.

Comment by William Finnegan. Before the 5 Central American Presidents met in Costa Rica recently to review compliance with the Arias plan for the region, the Reagan Administration seemed to be doing everything it could to halt the peace process. In early January, Lt. Gen. Colin Powell, President Reagan's national-security adviser & Elliott...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

American Chronicles STRANGER IN TOWN by Calvin Trillin. AMERICAN CHRONICLES about the murder of Anna Marie Anton, in the small town of Lyons, Nebraska, probably by Gregory Webb, Lyons police chief & her lover... Strangers almost never move to Lyons. It's not that Lyons, a farm community of 1200 people in eastern Nebraska, wouldn't be a pleasant place...

Poetry The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp, Amsterdam, 1632 by Linda Bierds. High winter. All canals...