Fiction Mariah by Jamaica Kincaid. The narrator, who is from Antigua, has been an au pair for Mariah's children now for the last three months. When spring finally arrives, she feels like she's lived through a bleak & cold time; something hard has settled inside her. She thinks that things must've gone Mariah's way; she...

The Talk of the Town Shadows by Caroline Fraser. Talk story about "Dark Shadows," a televison series that began as a gothic soap opera, and was gradually enhanced with elements of the supernatural to raise the ratings. The first such element was a 200 year-old vampire named Barnabas Collins, who was played alternately by Jonathan Frid and a...

Books by Janet Malcolm.

The Talk of the Town Small Talk by Mary Stewart Hammond. Of course, a belle should never seem...

Annals of Radiation THE HAZARDS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS III-VIDEO-DISPLAY TERMINALS by Paul Brodeur. ANNALS OF RADIATION about video-display terminals & the epidemological & experimental data linking them to birth defects & other health hazards. From the outset, manufacturers of computer terminals have been disinclined to measure the strength of the magnetic fields that emanate from their products or to give out information...

Comment Comment, part II by Brendan Gill. Comment about a real-estate developer, Harry Macklowe, who made himself famous by hiring a wrecking crew to demolish four old buildings on the north side of West Forty-forth Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, two of which were unoccupied S.R.O. ("single-room-occupancy") hotels commonly used as shelters...

The Talk of the Town Day Tour by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about Gardiners Island, the oldest North American estate still in the hands of the original family, and the last piece of privately owned undeveloped beachfront--3300 acres---in the vicinity of the Hamptons. Lion Gardiner bought the place from the Montauk Indians 350 years ago, and since, it...

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. The Bush Administration put foreign policy on hold for 5 months while it conducted an interagencyreview. The NATO summit in Brussels at the end of May was the action forcing mechanism that kicked the Administration in gear. It was Mikhail Gorbachev who had made, the bold move that made Bush's...

Our Far-Flung Correspondents ABIGAIL Y YO by Calvin Trillin. OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about the writer's attempt to speak & understand Spanish. He recalls that when he was in Spain right after college he had the opportunity to remain in Madrid for a year to study, but he didn't take it--a decision he thinks about often. In his...

The Current Cinema STONEWORK by Pauline Kael.

Comment Comment Pt. I by Suzannah Lessard. There is nothing new in the halting & unsure response of the U.S. government to the events in China. President Bush Bush's remarks were feeble, yet when his spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, described the behavior of the Chinese leadership as "repugnant" that seemed pompous. For years our responses to political crimes...

Poetry When the Wood Is Green by Eric Pankey. The ample day hesitates, and that brief delay...