Comment by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Comment about television talk shows. We understand about talk shows, about how having one has displaced the house with the two-car garage as the thing to aspire to these days. We understand those polls reporting that to young Americans fame is more important than money, and we understand how...

The Talk of the Town Gone Fishing by Nicholas Dawidoff. Talk story about seeing President Bush during a press opportunity at Sequoia National Forest. Writer was one of 8 journalists--mostly outdoor writers for publications like "Walking," "Backpacker," "Sunset," and "Four Wheeler"--who had been invited to join him. Emerging from behind some pines, was the President. He had on...

The Talk of the Town Shootist by Bryan Di Salvatore. Talk story about Bob Munden, the Fastest Gun Who Ever Lived. Tells about a demonstration he gave at Pioneer Chevrolet Oldsmobile Pontiac Geo in Polson, Montana. He told the crowd about the four fastest gundrawers in movies: 4th, Glenn Ford; 3rd Clint Eastwood; 2nd Sammy Davis, Jr.(who gave him...

The Talk of the Town Scouting by Susan Orlean. Talk story consisting of a list of the inventory of the recently vacated headquarters of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., at Third Avenue and Fiftieth Street: Three dozen assorted two-drawer lateral files. Ten workstations with acoustic panels. One case of booklets entitled "The Impact of Minority Presence in...

Fiction Faculty Lounge Surveillance Tapes by Veronica Geng. What the Education Presidency Has Been Listening To) [Opens with quotation from...

Fiction Drawn By Desire by Michael Ondaatje. Kirpal Singh, 21, part of a Sikh regiment of the British Army, joined a sapper unit, headed by Lord Suffolk, which dealt with delayed-action and unexploded bombs, during World War II. The first bomb Singh dismantled was in a giant white chalk horse in Westbury. Miss Morden, Suffolk's secretary...

Profiles GIVING GOOD VALUE by Holly Brubach. PROFILE of john Loring, who is the design director of Tiffany and company. He is tall, handsome, with a broad high forehead and a rugged, prominent nose. Eleanor Lambert, a fashion publicity agent and a friend of long standing, said, "He's not a fifty-year-old--he's two twenty-five...

Reflections THE ABSENCE OF EMPIRE by William Pfaff. REFLECTIONS on European nationalism. There is division between societies which have been through the "modern" experience and those which have not. It coincides with a religious split--betwwen the Catholicism and Protestantism of the West, and the Orthodox Christianity and Islam of the East. In the East, modern nations were...

The Current Cinema OUTLAWS by Michael Sragow.

Books by Claudia Roth Pierpont.

Poetry This Morning by Charles Simic. Enter without knocking, hardworking ant...

Poetry A Family History by Julia Kasdorf. At dusk the girl who will become my mom...

Poetry In Umbria: A Snapshot by Amy Clampitt. The coldest, wettest spring within living memory...