Comment by Charles McGrath. Comment about the Democratic Convention's lack of spontaneity, its silliness, its polictical oration, its simple-mindedness, but finally its spirit of hope. The Convention was held in New York City. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were nominated on the Democratic. With the nomination sewn up weeks in advance, no fights...

The Talk of the Town Activist by William Finnegan. Talk story about Laura Retzler, a recent University of Iowa graduate, in town for the Democratic National Convention. "There are three issues I go back and forth on--suburbs, protectionism, and Madonna." Writer waffled on all three, not meeting the "Retzler standards of political debate." Retzler caught the writer's attention...

The Talk of the Town Topless by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Talk story about the way some democratic conventioneers spend their time (specifically, their evenings) in Manhattan during the Democratic National Convention. Writer defines New York's "sign of decline" as "the success of anything that involves striptease." Decline and an out-of-towner's free time meet at Stringfellows, a topless bar...

The Talk of the Town Choices by Susan Orlean. Talk Story about different hot and "not hot" items available during the Democratic National Convention. The Quayle Quarterly booth at the Hilton was busy. Joe Fodor, the editor of the magazine, was showing it and "What a Waste It Is to Lose One's Mind: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Dan Quayle...

Fiction Baby's First Step by John Updike. Glenn Morrissey, 36, a lawyer for the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Washington, D.C., breaks his leg playing touch football when a "young black man" slips and falls on it. He needs an operation, and, reflecting how his wife, Stacey, laughed seeing him .hop, realized "he knew her from...

Fiction Parachute Silk by Emily Carter. Gloria, who takes AZT, remembers time she spent in a Minnesota Treatment Center recovering from alcoholism and opiate addiction and makes a list of "Things I Will Never Do" and "Things I Would Never Do:" the former to preserve her sorrow and the latter her dignity. A red silk parachute...

A Reporter at Large SIBERIA by Robert Cullen. A REPORTER AT LARGE about Siberia, and especially about the Kemerovo region. On Jan. 31 of this year, Boris Yeltsin granted an amnesty to the last remaining prisoners of conscience in Russian jails. He brought to a close a painful epoch in Siberian history. Tells about the history of Siberia...

The Current Cinema by Michael Sragow.

A Neurologist's Notebook THE LANDSCAPE OF HIS DREAMS by Oliver Sacks. A NEUROLOGIST'S NOTEBOOK about San Francisco artist Franco Magnani and his photographically accurate paintings, done from memory, of Pontito, the little Tuscan hill town where he spent his childhood. He is that rare sensory phenomenon an eidetic artist: an artist able to hold in memory, for hours or days (perhaps...

The Sky Line PURE WRIGHT by Brendan Gill.

Poetry The Exodus of Peaches by Nancy Willard. The new peach trees are bandaged...

Poetry Even by Marie Ponsot. Sundown, & under the afterglow...

Poetry Octopus (Monterey Bay Aquarium) by John Lindgren. All is nerve here. Sinew. Lymph...