In Fashion Survivors by Holly Brubach. Column-length description of fashion dolls-some 200, dressed by 53 French couture houses in outfits from their spring/summer collection immediately following WWII. They were displayed in Europe in 1945. The following year, wearing a new wardrobe, they travelled to America. The dolls were then retired. Describes the manufacture...

A Reporter at Large THE RIGHTFUL OWNER by Susan Sheehan. REPORTER AT LARGE about the consequences of not having a will and the search for an heir. On Mar. 22, 1984 Edward Devlin died without a will. On Nov. 12, 1985 the Markham Company Research Services received a list of 120 missing stockholders. (Markham is in the business of restoring...

The Talk of the Town Hotel by George W. S. Trow. Talk story about the newly renovated Hotel Paramount, on West 46th St. The hotel's interior was designed by the French designer Philippe Starck. A six-foot high copy of the painting "The Lacemaker" by Vermeer, stands behind the beds in the single rooms. Tells what Mr. Starck had to say...

Fiction Amnesty by Nadine Gordimer. A young woman narrates the story of her potential husband's freedom from imprisonment. The man, never named, had left their village on the grassy plains of S. Africa 9 years earlier to work as a construction worker among the unfinished tops of skyscrapers in an obscure but not too distant...

Comment by Lawrence Weschler. Comment comparing the crisis in the Middle East (with 250,000 US troops deployed to counter Iraq's occupation or Kuwait) with the budget crisis and the savings-and-loan crisis. One of the most striking things about the continuing Gulf crisis is that the fervor of the columnists and tabloids intent...

The Talk of the Town Herons by Mark Singer. Talk story about a visit to the heron sanctuary on the Isle of Meadows, near northwestern Staten Island. The many varieties of herons who nest and forage there, and on Prall's Island and Shooters Island, have been called "the single most important colonial waterbird rookery complex in New York State...

The Diplomatic Round SWEEPING CHANGE by John Newhouse. DIPLOMATIC ROUND about how events in Europe are being shaped by a Soviet Union spinning out of control, and a unified Germany. The focus in 1990, and perhaps the next decade, will be on the European Community(E.C.) as it adapts to a preeminent German role and a reduced U.S...

Fiction Sex-Linked Traits by Jean McGarry. The story of a 15-year-old girl, Jacqueline McManus, and her relationship with Dr. Foleys an angry, frustrated woman, who, although she never expresses it, feels some kindness toward Jacqueline. Dr. Foley, a scientist, appears to be a sexless woman. (she lives with her mother, is unmarried, childless, and...

The Current Cinema END OF THE ROAD by Terrence Rafferty.

Poetry Decathlon Man by Primo Levi. Believe me, the marathon is nothing...

Poetry To a Child by Harold Brodkey. Here, here...