Comment Comment, Pt. I by James Lardner. Comment about the brevity of the Persian Gulf war and the role of the US in the world as a result. At the end of a war in which Americans were repeatedly told to steel themselves for difficulties that lay ahead, the thing that few of us were fully prepared...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Garrison Keillor. Comment about moving the offices of the New Yorker. On Friday, February 22nd, with a great long sigh, The New Yorker moved out of 25 West Forty-Third Street, our home since 1935, and into fresh new offices across the street. It took 47 hours--5 shifts, 57 men on...

The Talk of the Town "Ashokan, Farewell" by Vajra Kilgour. Talk story about composer Jay Ungar. He is the composer of "Ashokan Farewell", the sweet, sad fiddle tune that was the theme of the PBS documentary "The Civil War." Writer has known all along that it wasn't either a.) traditional or b) written for the show; it is, as Jay...

The Talk of the Town Shy by Guy Trebay. A talk story about Rapunzel, a hairy Sumatran rhino residing at the Bronx Zoo. Writer interviews Jim Doherty, a general curator at the zoo, who is one of the world's experts on hairy Sumatran rhinos. A mate has been selected for her from another zoo. For a snack she eats...

Fiction Al Denny by Garrison Keillor. Al Denny describes his career as a best-selling author of self-improvement books. En route to San Francisco for a conference on Birthing Our Self-Affirmation of Wellness, he can't find his home phone number or remember where he lives. He recalls Thoreau's advices "Simplify, simplify." He writes a...

Fiction The Last Lovely City by Alice Adams. Dr. Benito Zamora, old, famous, and recently widowed, is known as a philanthropist both in the U.S. and in his native Mexico. Carla, a young journalist, invites him to a party in Stinson Beach, California, near San Francisco, where he lives. The party is at the ostentatious beach house of...

The World of Business NO ONE LIKE ME by Connie Bruck. THE WORLD OF BUSINESS about Wall St. trader John Mulheren, Jr., accused by the federal govt. of illegal activities and put on trial. The SEC & the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of N.Y. investigated his relationship with Ivan Boesky, the notorious admitted felon, who was formerly Mulheren's...

Annals of Medicine A GOOD, SAFE TAN by Berton Roueche. ANNALS OF MEDICINE about a 20-year-old girl called Penny Thompson (pseud.) who contracted aplastic anemia from no known cause. The usual treatment involves blood transfusions but this patient was a Jehovah's Witness & said she would rather die than accept any transfusions. She & her parents were in...

The Theatre ILL-APPORTIONED PARTS by Edith Oliver.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Current Cinema STONED AGAIN by Terrence Rafferty.

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Tells about the Persian Gulf war. The swift collapse of the Iraqi Army took almost all of Washington by surprise. By the morning of Feb. 26, after Saddam Hussein had said on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops were withdrawing from Kuwait--a luxury President Bush wasn't willing to give them...

Books by George Steiner.

The Film File Blood in the Face by Terrence Rafferty. A skillfully made documentary about the radical right wing in North America. The movie’s directors—Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, and James Ridgeway—put on display an alarmingly large aggregation of Fascist loonies: members of the Klan, the American Nazi Party, and other, less well-known organizations, all of them dedicated to spreading the...

Poetry Kitchen Fable by Eleanor Ross Taylor. The fork lived with the knife...

Poetry Book Learning by James Galvin. There are certain constants...

Poetry In Music by Czeslaw Milosz. Wailing of a flute, a little drum...