Comment Comment, Pt. I by James Lardner. Comment on the failed coup in the Soviet Union, and the events that have followed upon it. It was "the power of the people" that did in the plot against Mikhail Gorbachev--so Pres. Bush said. Bush hailed the defeat of the coup as proof that the march of democracy...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Liesl Schillinger. Comment on the writer's concern for her family's many Soviet friends during the recent coup attempt. They called their friend Alim, who visited the family in their town in Oklahoma in 1987. They couldn't reach him at his home in Lugansk (formerly Voroshilovgrad), in the Ukraine, but his friend Natalya...

Comment Comment, Pt. III by Adam Gopnik. The only colossal heroic monument that still grips the American imagination is Mt. Rushmore: realism gone nuts, so crazily grandiose that it has an inevitable edge of Pop--Teddy Roosevelt's gold-rimmed spectacles perfectly rendered in tons of stone...

Fiction The Way People Run by Christopher Tilghman. Barry has been looking for work on the West Coast, after losing his job on Wall Street. While his wife and two small daughters remain in New York, he drives aimlessly around the West. He stops at the prairie town where his maternal grandfather lived after abandoning his family in...

The World of Business LEAP OF FAITH by Connie Bruck. THE WORLD OF BUSINESS about the sale of entertainment giant MCA, Inc., to Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., of Osaka, Japan, one of the world's largest consumer-electronics manufacturers. All the negotiations were directed by Hollywood talent agent Michael Ovitz of Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Ovitz persuaded Matsushita that he alone...

The Theatre GOODBYE, DOLLY by Edith Oliver.

The Current Cinema by Terrence Rafferty.

Letter from Hong Kong by Fred C. Shapiro. Tells about the question of whether the U.S. will retain Most Favored Nation status with China, a move that would adversely affect the economy of Hong Kong. Despite China's treatment of dissidents, there are those here who make what might be called a relativity argument in favor of retaining MFN...

On Photography by Ingrid Sischy.

Poetry Left Open by W. S. Merwin. The shutters are rusted open on the north...

Poetry Youth by Czeslaw Milosz. Your unhappy and silly youth...