Comment by Adam Gopnik. Comment on the anger that's been breaking out all over town. The other evening, at the Film Festival at Tully Hall, the curtain-raiser was a three-minute short by a couple of young Austrians. The film was run-of-the-mill experimental stuff. The moment it ended, the audience...

The Talk of the Town Ossies by Liesl Schillinger. Talk story about the writer's friend Gunnar, who called last week from Dresden to say that he had just got back from the Soviet Union. For over a year now, Gunnar has owned a jazz bar in Dresden called Cafe 100; but he is a West German, from Hanover, and...

The Talk of the Town Fertilizer by Mark Singer. Talk story about the 16th annual World Fertilizer Conference at the Marriott Marquis. The writer tried unsuccessfully to meet Alfredo Gruber Huncal, the president of the Venezuelan petrochemical firm Palmaven S.A...

Fiction Needs by George W. S. Trow. Humorous piece in which the speaker practices coertion by using euphemistic jargon: "First, what I need you to do is give me permission to drive you completely insane by using the word 'need' in places where another word like 'want' or 'order' would be more 'honest'.... When I (we) shove...

Fiction Lilacs by Abraham Verghese. Bobby lives in Boston, where he is being treated for AIDS. He has lived with the disease for nine years. Frustrated and in debt, he robs a bank, using a gun that belonged to his first lover, Primo, a pilot. They met in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in 1973; Bobby had...

Profiles MOVING TO RICHLAND-I by Philip Schuyler. PROFILE of James L. Acord, Jr., a sculptor who designs an builds nuclear sculptures. Describes his repository for nuclear waste(in this case uranium oxide glaze from Mango Red fiesta ware)lodged inside a granite sculpture called "Monstrance for a Grey Horse." Acord has proposed solutions to problems all along...

Jazz by Whitney Balliett.

The Theatre STARTERS by Edith Oliver.

Letter from Tokyo by Patrick Smith. Tells about the importance of rice in Japan, all of which is grown domestically, the high prices paid to farmers to continue to grow it, and the denial of imports, especially from America. Rice is a controlled commodity. The government regulates the amount of land devoted to the cultivation of...

Letter from Tokyo by Alexander Gerschenkron. Tells about the great importance of rice in Japan. Among the most insightful books about the place of rice farmers in Japanese society is one that is not about Japan at all. "Bread and Democracy in Germany," by Alexander Gerschenkron, was first published in 1943 and has since been reissued...

Books by Arlene Croce.

Poetry Nebraska, October by James Reidel. Across the two-lane highway into Beatrice...

Poetry Mister Hanusevich by Czeslaw Milosz. Hanusevich wants Nina. But why? Why...

Poetry Picturesque by Robert B. Shaw. That farm just north of town...