Comment by Louis Menand. Comment about abortion and about the privatization of American life. Every time the Supreme Court hands down a decision that touches on abortion, it is a reminder of how unsettled a community America still really is. So many of our uncertainties about the kind of society we want to be...

The Talk of the Town Beautiful by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about Morton Sanders, 70, the leading manufacturer and purveyor of voodoo drums in New York. His fortyyear interest in the culture and religion of the Caribbean has led him to instruct himself, and also his son, who is a professional percussionist, in the construction of the chekere. The...

The Talk of the Town Mozartiana by Mindy Aloff. Talk story about a performance of dressage set to Mozart. Genius is an 11-year-old Swedish bay gelding--dressage a specialty. He is worth about a quarter of a million dollars and will probably be worth a lot more when he gets more training and performing experience under his...

The Talk of the Town Latin Day by Mary Norris. Talk story about the chariot races at Connecticut State Latin Day, which were held in the Circus Maximus, across the road from Middletown High School, in what is known during football season as Miller-Fillback Field. Teen-age classicists raced chariots that resemble two-wheeled garden carts, with a T...

Fiction Bob Dylan Imitators' Contest by John S. P. Walker. Color cartoon spread about "The Annual Bob Dylan Imitators' Contest held at Elston Gunn Dairy." Banner at top reads, in reverse lettering, "Bob Dylan's 50th Birthday." All the contestants are animals: a cat, a cow, a goat, and two chickens...

Fiction Forain by Mavis Gallant. Blaise Forain is the publisher of Blaise Editions, a small press in Paris devoted to the works of Eastern and Central European writers. One of his writers, Tremski, an emigre Polish Jew, has died, and Forain is attending his funeral. It is a Catholic service, arranged by Tremski's estranged stepdaughter...

A Reporter at Large GOLDEN MONKEYS by Diane Ackerman. A REPORTER AT LARGE about the golden lion tamarin monkey, and about a conservation program to reintroduce it to its natural environment in a. rain forest in eastern Brazil, called the Mata Atlantica. Writer accompanies Ben Beck, who is the head of the reintroduction project of the Golden Lion Tamarin...

Report from Baghdad by Milton Viorst. Writer visited Iraq in April. In Baghdad his impression was that the masses were not rebellious. They city was damaged but ruins did not leap into view. On closer inspection it was evident that the war had created hardships. U.S. bombing destroyed telecommunications facilities, transportation links, key govt. offices &...

The Theatre THE ROAD TO MINSK by Mimi Kramer.

Around City Hall Roman Holiday by Andy Logan. Tells about racial tension in the city as the result of the death of a white woman, Alexis Welsh, who was stabbed to death by a black man, Kevin McKiever, and the racially-motivated attack of a black high-school football star. Jermaine Ewell, by a gang of white youths...

Books by Louis Menand.

The Film File Perfectly Normal by Michael Sragow. Crossed cultures and cross-dressing meet in this blissfully funny romance and odd-couple movie, set in a Canadian backwater. It’s one of those rare farces that quench every appetite. Michael Riley plays a brewery worker, hockey player, covert opera lover, and cabdriver; Robbie Coltrane plays the fare who came to dinner—an...

Poetry I Answer Your Question With a Question by Deborah Garrison. Don't ask me so soon...

Poetry The End of the Opera by Howard Nemerov. Knowing that what he witnessed was only art...