Comment by Mark Danner. Comment about foreign policy toward Iraq. Less than a year after Americans paraded in the streets to celebrate victory in the Gulf War, the entire conflict, which appeared to cataclysmic at the time, is rapidly receeding from view. The troops have long since come home. Kuwait has become once again...

The Talk of the Town Splurge by Susan Orlean. Talk story about famous handbag designer Judith Leiber's in-store appearance at Sak's Fifth Avenue, told in the voice of an extended 'did-you-hear-the-one-about' style joke. Mrs. Leiber was at Sak's to promote her new summer bags. A typical bag is "tiny, rhinestone-encrusted and shaped...

The Talk of the Town Revolutionary by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about conceptual artist Alex Melamid's new project, an FM radio station called Radio Free Bayonne. "We ordered a transmitter from Canada. Imagine--is illegal to buy that transmitter in this country! FCC is KCB, controls everything that counts. So, for time being, I just use little FM setup...

Fiction Poltergeists by Jane Shapiro. Story told mostly in a flashback to 1985 when the narrator's two children, Zack and Nora, were finishing high school and she was newly divorced and living in New Jersey. Now she lived in New York City, and after speaking with Nora, who lived in Rome, found herself in front...

Letter from Washington by Jane Kramer. Tells about the Stasi(or secret police) files in East Germany, which were opened after the Berlin Wall came down. The files of the Stasi officers themselves were removed, but the files of the informers they controlled were left behind. An estimated 300,000 informers worked for the Stasi, or as...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Annals of Gastronomy CHILIES by Jane Stern. ANNALS OF GASTRONOMY about chili. Writers visit the Hatch, New Mexico Chile Festival, the restaurant scene in Santa Fe, and the National Fiery Foods Show in Albuquerque...

Dancing by Alastair Macaulay.

Books by John Updike.

The Film File K2 by Michael Sragow. No, it’s not about a spot remover or a lubricant, but about the second-highest peak in the world and a pair of climbers (Michael Biehn and Matt Craven) who conquer it. The mountaineering footage is so spectacular and the melodrama that goes with it so flat that you wish the...

The Film File Passed Away by Michael Sragow. A mildly schizoid movie about a funeral, this failed black-comic heartwarmer manages to trash over a dozen good actors. Jack Warden briefly plays the patriarch of an Irish-American family; Maureen Stapleton is his widow; Bob Hoskins and William Petersen are his sons; Pamela Reed and Frances McDormand are his daughters....

The Film File White Sands by Michael Sragow. The kind of thriller with a road atlas where the script should be. The director, Roger Donaldson, and the screenwriter, Daniel Pyne, send a small-town sheriff hurtling all over New Mexico to solve the mystery of a corpse found with half a million dollars. Willem Dafoe is completely out of...

Poetry Dragonfly Reserve by Barbara Jordan. The sign, in Central Park, announces...

Poetry The Season by Elizabeth Macklin. I love so to be in your body...