Comment by Mark Danner. Comment on the government's reluctance to surrender the powers it claimed under the shadow of the Cold War. The recent guilty plea of Alan Fiers, a senior official of the C.I.A., to charges of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the diversion to the Nicaraguan Contras of profits from...

The Talk of the Town Total by Timothy Ferris. Talk story from a stargazing friend who viewed the total eclipse from a golf course on the northwest coast of the island of Hawaii, a site selected because Hawaii is close to the size of the moon's shadow and would therefore be cast in shadow while the neighboring islands would...

The Talk of the Town Balled Up by Anne Hodgman. Talk story about visit to Rockville Centre pet shop, Parrots of the World, where writer purchased a hedgehog. Recently the U.S.D.A. discovered that hedgehogs imported from Africa were infested with cattle-threatening ticks and it has banned their sale in the U.S., making hedgehogs more difficult to find these days...

Fiction Studio B by Garrison Keillor. Strange things happen at radio station WLT's Studio B, which is broadcast from the Hotel Ogden in downtown Minneapolis. Various interesting mishaps occur there. The president of WLT, Ray Soderbjerg, is the puritanical holy keeper of the radio station. The studio's own sordid past include clergymen who could not hear...

Profiles A TOUCH FOR THE NOW by Calvin Tomkins. PROFILE of Walter Hopps, 59, consulting curator of the Menil Collection, in Houston, which opened to the public in 1987. Hopps is the founding director. Although he resigned from the director's job two years ago, it appears that he relinquished only the administrative responsibilities of the post; he still plans...

Jazz by Whitney Balliett.

The Current Cinema 4 1/2 by Terrence Rafferty.

Letter from Europe by Jane Kramer. Describes preparations for 1992, which has become a kind of code for the economic unification of the members of the European Community. Countries not in the E.C. are eager to join, but its twelve members are reluctant to admit them. The French do not want East Europe in "Europe" because...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Books by Verlyn Klinkenborg.

Poetry Twentieth Century by John Ash. Another bunch of fallen gods returning from the Eighth...

Poetry Proofreading My Father's Retina by Elizabeth Macklin. I want to mark your eyes "Clean...