Comment by Mark Hertsgaard. Comment about the scene in Rio de Janeiro at the Earth Summit. "Para ingles ver"--for the English to see. Brazilians were using that expression a lot during the last two weeks. It was an inside joke--a reference to the fact that Rio was a much changed city during...

The Talk of the Town Pros by Chrystal Ingram. Talk story about "Al Alberts Showcase," a TV talent show broadcast from Philadelphia for nearly a quarter of a century. Mr. Alberts used to be lead singer of the Four Aces, a pop group that has sold over a hundred million records to date. He talks about the group's hits...

The Talk of the Town Second Opinion by Mark Singer. Talk story comparing the Eighteenth World Congress of Dermatology, at the Javits Center, with a speech given by Vice-Pres. Dan Quayle at the Waldorf-Astoria. Dr. Stephen I. Katz, head of the dermatology branch of the National Cancer Institute and the secretary-general of the Eighteenth World Congress, talks...

The Talk of the Town Good Citizen by Joan Acocella. A talk story about a Canine Good Citizen test, which was held on the lawn of the Western Greenwich Civic Center, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Present was Manny, a Lowchen, or Little Lion dog. "His real name is Manet, after the painter, but we call him Manny," his owner, Carole Kramer...

Fiction Career Move by Martin Amis. Parody of the literary magazine world and Hollywood: the poets and screenwriters have changed places...

Profiles Going to the Core by David Blum. PROFILE of pianist Richard Goode, 49, who has only in the past few years become known as a solo pianist, after many years as a chamber musician. Born in the East Bronx, he first studied with Elvira Szigeti. When he was 10, Rosalie Leventritt offered to sponsor the whole of...

The Talk of the Town REVELATORY PIANIST by David Blum. PROFILE of pianist Richard Goode. Goode talks at length about the experience of performing and recording the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas: "When you're immersed in Beethoven, you feel that he's right in the center, and everything else is radiating out from him... Like a Roman architect, he made the...

Concert Records / Popular Music by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

The Current Cinema FAMILY VALUES by Terrence Rafferty.

Letter from Hong Kong by Fred C. Shapiro. A few years ago, Deng Xiaoping, China's Senior Leader, dismissed as "absolute rubbish" suggestions by lesser Chinese officials that the People's Liberation Army might not be stationing troops here after 1997. Last January, Deng came out of his nominal retirement and made an inspection of communities lining the Pearl River...

Books by Lloyd Rose.

The Film File Adam’s Rib by Michael Sragow. Single females from three generations of a contemporary Russian family—a bedridden grandmother, a twice-divorced working mother, and her two grown daughters—share an apartment as well as various mental and emotional cramps. Vyacheslav Krishtofovich’s look at the small disturbances of woman, taken from the book, “House of Young Women,” by Anatole...

The Film File Class Act by Michael Sragow. The latest teen comedy to star rapper/actors Kid ’N Play is like their two “House Party” films jumbled together and retooled in a high-school shop class. Apart from Kid changing his cloudscraping haircut for mini-dreadlocks, it doesn’t offer much in the way of novelty or laughs. Kid is Duncan Pinderhughes,...

Poetry Wisdom of the Desert Fathers by Katha Pollitt. True, in the legends...

Poetry Baked Alaska by John Ashbery. It will do. It's not...