Comment by Liesl Schillinger. Comment about Adolph Hitler. The recent reappearance of the Nazis on the world stage has coincided with Germany's reunification, and reflects both a secret fear in the rest of the world that Germany's nightmarish past is on the verge of reasserting itself and a less secret conviction that Germany's reemergence...

The Talk of the Town The Smell by John Seabrook. Talk Story about a horrible smell on North Moore Street, in Tribeca, that turns out to come from T. Chan Enterprises, a food export business, that had recently expanded into the shark-fin business. Shark fins are processed by letting them rot. The new smell did not mix with the...

The Talk of the Town Country Person by Michael Rubiner. Talk Story about Doug Stevens, lead singer and manager of Outband, which he bills as "the only gay and lesbian country band in the world." Stevens said, "Country songs are almost always love songs about heterosexual relationships. I wanted to play country music for gay people, about gay things." Writer...

The Talk of the Town The Bubble by Alison Rose. Talk story about an exhibition called "Beauty: An Art Installation" and a party at the Michel Kazan Towhhouse of Beauty. Kazan is the hairdresser who invented the bouffant the bubble, and the French twist...

Fiction Secrets by Judy Troy. The narrator, Jean, tells about the 2 weeks following her father's death in 1966 from a fall at a construction site, when she was 13 and her brothers Eddie and Lee were 10 and 7; they were living in Florida with their mother in & small house on Interstate 95...

Fiction The Musical Husbands by Adam Gopnik. Details the habits and worries of "musical husbands," men who continually upgrade their stereo equipment, looking for the perfect sound, and yet don't seem to have any feeling for music itself. While their wives seem to have a simpler, more straightforward appreciation of music. Their best friends are married musicians...

The Sporting Scene II-PLAYING DOC'S GAMES by William Finnegan. THE SPORTING SCENE about surfing, especially at the San Francisco beach called Ocean Beach, and also about Dr. Mark Renneker, a local surfing fanatic. Writer describes surfing in February at the beach, when the Pacific is very cold. Tells about meeting Renneker in the surf. Also tells about surfers Bill...

The Sky Line HAZARDS OF BUSINESS by Brendan Gill.

Musical Events by Paul Griffiths.

The Theatre TWO ON THE AISLE by Edith Oliver.

Around City Hall Bounce Time by Andy Logan. Dinkins was being treated as a designated loser this spring: hisfavorable rating in the polls was 29%. However, a poll published in "Newsday" on July 2nd showed that 41% of New Yorkers polled in June had a favorable impression of him, an improvement that most observers assumed reflectedlocal relief over...

A Critic at Large A STUDY IN SCARLETT by Claudia Roth Pierpont. A CRITIC AT LARGE about Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind." Published in 1936, the novel divided American literature along its oldest fault line, with serious writers and critics on one side, and the scribbler and her public on the other. The book's staggering sales contrasted with those of Faulkner's...

Poetry A Shave By the Ganges by Jeffrey Harrison. Sleepwalking from one ghat to the next...

Poetry Undertakings by Richard Howard. Though "a spindle shanked withered virgin...

Poetry Hourglass by Josephine Jacobsen. Flawless" is the word, no doubt, for this third of May...