Comment Comment, Pt. I by Louis Menand. Comment about the Senate Judiciary hearings on Clarence Thomas and their effects on the American psyche. Thomas, the federal judge nominated by President Bush to serve on the Supreme Court, was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, an Oklahoma law professor, who worked for him in the early eighties...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Lincoln Caplan. Comment about the selection process for Judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. By the close of the hearings, there was wide agreement that the process of selecting Supreme Court Justices had broke down, yielding a television event that made people feel shame and fear, anger and betrayal. Much of...

Comment Comment, Pt. III by Adam Gopnik. Comment on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Clarence Thomas, the Senate's treatment of Professor Anita Hill, and the writer's conversion to feminist theory as a result of watching the hearings. He is of that generation of men who grew up and were educated at a time when the...

Fiction The Other Side of the Street by John Updike. Fawcett returns to Hayesville, Pennsylvania, after his mother's death, to clean out her apartment and take possession of his meagre inheritance. Looking through the phone book for a notary public to transfer the title of his mother's car, he notices one listed at 262 Chestnut Street, across the street from...

Fiction Come Over by Ellen Cooney. Edna Fleury has run Thomas Mason's medical practice for twenty-eight years. She is divorced from her husband, Gene Their son, Robbie, is also divorced, and has moved away to Miami. Edna, a recovering alcoholic, is preparing to attend her granddaughter Kitty's birthday party. She has a strained relationship with...

The Theatre ADOPTION by Edith Oliver.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

A Critic at Large ROCK AND COLE by Ethan Mordden. A CRITIC AT LARGE about Cole Porter and a rock album of his music called "red hot + blue". Cole Porter's centenary this year has been called a musical occasion: above all, a reviewing of Porter's catalogue in a spate of recordings-- from the first complete reading of his favorite score...

Books by Brad Leithauser.

Poetry Sometimes it's funny, this after-hour when 3 A.M. Comedy by Deborah Garrison. Sometimes it's funny, this after-hour when...

Poetry Love's Old Sweet Song by John Ashbery. Because if all of life is just a blip or some kind...

Poetry Small Myth for My Father by Stephen Perry. I hear him nights under the bridge...