The Talk of the Town Home Brew by Mike Cannell. Talk story about home brewer Jeff Silman, who consults this British folk chemistry tome published in 1825. Silman is brewing a beer (a Northern Brown Ale) for an upcoming competition. He has had great success in competition...

Comment Comment, Pt. I by Gerald Jonas. Comment about Rumania and Rumanian food. Rumanian food was another story than its history. Writer's grandfather loved to cook, and his back-yard garden(with its biennially bearing peach tree) was as much a part of the house as the always chilly cellar, where he concocted a variety of wines...

Books by Terrence Rafferty.

The Talk of the Town Foleys by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about Rick Wessler, who is the foley-artist-in-residence at Sync Sound on Tenth Ave. between 55th & 56th Streets. Foley artists supply the sounds for many of the actions that take place in movies, on television & in commercials. After the film is made those sounds...

Annals of Politics THE JOHNSON YEARS: THE OLD AND THE NEW I-THE OPPONENT by Robert A. Caro. ANNALS OF POLITICS about Coke Robert Stevenson, who became Lyndon Johnson's opponent in the 1948 Senate race. He was born in 1888, oldest of 8 children. His father was an itinerant schoolteacher who travelled with his family to remote communities on the Texas frontier. The Stevensons' poverty forced Coke to...

Fiction The Poet and the Muse by Tatyana Tolstaya. Nina, a doctor in Moscow, has left her husband and is looking for a passionate romance, which, she believes, she deserves as much as anyone else, but only finds herself in a tired affair with a fastidious dermatologist, Arkady Borisovich. During a Japanese flu epidemic, she finds her way into...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Theatre FUGARD, PRO TEM by Edith Oliver.

Fiction Life Without Leann by Larry Doyle. The story is one issue of the Life Without Leann newsletter which reports on the struggle of Larry, one of Leann's many tormented suitors, to go on without her. Like any newsletter, it has various weekly departments. The first, "Leann Watcher of the Week," reports the best recent sighting of...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Penelope Gilliatt. Obituary of Samuel Beckett, who died Dec. 22, 1989. Died just avoiding obligation to another decade artificially divided. Born on Good Friday of 1906, though some claim a month later. Who but he not to choose a happy date? Tells about Beckett's presence at the cremation of George Devine, the...

A Reporter at Large BALOCHISTAN by Mary Anne Weaver. A REPORTER AT LARGE about Balochistan. It is a province in southwest Pakistan, & is a brooding and melancholy place. Its martial people fought the British to a standstill during the days of the Raj; Kipling wrote here; and field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery taught at the staff college in...

Fiction Misconceptions of Richness by John Ash. The neighbors' placid dog, grown suddenly cantankerous, howls for half an hour without pausing to clear its throat. The old man on the floor above... he should be able to see the red flowers of the quince against the uneven gray slats of the fence. Indomitable beauty, it keeps this...

Poetry Conch Shell by Eric Ormsby. The conch shell on our kitchen counter leans...

Poetry Bird in Space: First Study by Linda Bierds. Nothing grows in the shadow of great trees...