Fiction Grover at the Wheel by Gish Jen. The story is set in New York in 1952. Ralph Chang, a Ph. D. candidate from Shanghai, takes his wife, Helen, and his sister, Theresa, to visit his colleague, Old Chao. Chao is to introduce Theresa to his friend, Grover Ding. Chao's wife serves a ten-course meal, during which...

The Talk of the Town Dreamer by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about Pepe Karmel, an art historian and fan of the music of Jimi Hendrix. He is preparing a comprehensive catalogue of Picasso's Cubist drawings. This summer in Paris, he came upon an important stockbook of the art dealer D.-H. Kahnweiler detailing the order in which Picasso and...

The Current Cinema THE SPY GAME by Terrence Rafferty.

The Talk of the Town Fanciers by George W. S. Trow. Talk story about the annual show of dog art held by the Dog Fanciers Club, which took place this year at the Eugenia Room of Sardi's. One serious dog fancier tells about her favorite book, "The Complete Maltese," by Nicholas Cutillo. She quotes an epigram by the Roman poet Marital...

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. The Pesian Gulf Crisis produces deep unease about the unknown, of what is in the minds of George Bush and Saddam Hussein... The best single explication of the President's policy was given by Secretary of State James Baker in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on December 5th...

Performance My Life: A Series of Privately Funded Performance-Art Pieces by Susan Orlean. A self-absorbed young woman describes her life as if it were a series of five performance-art pieces. Throughout, she alludes to her father as her "private funding source." 1. BIRTH, features another performance artist, "Mom." 2. COMING HOME EXTREMELY LATE BECAUSE I WAS MAKING SNOW ANGELS AND FORGOT...

Comment Comment. by Ronnie Dugger. Comment about the Persian Gulf crisis. The Founding Fathers worked at creating the U.S. Constitution during the summer of 1787. There is no doubt that they intended that Congress and not the Pres. to possess the power to initiate war against other nations. Yet there seems a possibility that Pres...

A Critic at Large THE DARK CONTINENT OF HENRY STANLEY by Jeremy Bernstein. A CRITIC AT LARGE about explorer and writer Henry Morton Stanley, and about his three books, "How I Found Livingstone"(1872), "Through the Dark Continent"(1878), and "In Darkest Africa"(1890). All three were successful, making Stanley a wealthy man. Only one--"Through the Dark Continent"remains available, in a...

The Theatre ARRESTED DEVELOPMENTS by Mimi Kramer.

In Fashion by Holly Brubach. Plastic surgery today makes it possible for women to go out and buy themselves a new body the way a woman used to buy herself a new dress... The lastest thing is having the lips injected with collagen to make the mouth look like a ripe piece of fruit. During...

Profiles CHRONICLING THE CHAOS by John Newhouse. PROFILE of Vitaly Korotich, editor of a Soviet weekly magazine called "Ogonyok". In just 4 1/2 turbulent years under Korotich "Ogonyok's" circulation rose from 260,000 to four million six hundred thousand, mainly because the magazine said aloud what many people only thought. Its articles have confirmed popular, suspicions of corruption...

Poetry Street Music by Robert Pinsky. Sweet Babylon, headphones. Song bones...

Poetry Captive Voices by Eleanor Ross Taylor. They always prayed at last...

Poetry Last Day by May Swenson. I'm having a sunbath on the rug...