Comment by Adam Gopnik. Comment about Ray Goulding, who died recently. He was not often in his lifetime ranked as one of the seminal American comedians. But the note that he and his partner, Bob Elliott, so often struckseems, in retrospect, the keenest & truest satiric expression of the "media culture" of their time...

The Sporting Scene HEAD DOWN by Stephen King. THE SPORTING SCENE about Little League baseball in Maine, and about the Bangor West team, which won the Maine State Championship. Tells about a batting practice for Fred Moore and writer's son Owen. Dave Mansfield is the head coach of the team; he is a loud, restless man who happens...

A Reporter at Large INVISIBLE PEOPLE by Michael J. Arlen. REPORTER AT LARGE about human rights violations in the Philippines. Writer travelled with Sidney Jones & Jemera Rone, who were investigating the violations. Jones is the executive director of Asia Watch, a private organization, based in N.Y., that monitors human-rights abuses in Asia. Rone, a lawyer, has worked for...

The Talk of the Town Homework by Susan Orlean. Talk story about Dial-A-Teacher, a homework-help hotline service run by the United Federation of Teachers, that operates afternoons from Monday through Thursday. Forty teachers answer the phones. None will let you cheat. They will help you find the right answer within yourself, where it probably exists but...

The Talk of the Town Exotic by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about Marc Agger and his business called the Agger Trading Company which deals in shark fins. Its offices are in an old warehouse on the premises of the Brooklyn Navy Yard...

Fiction Our Summer of Love by George W. S. Trow. The story is a reminiscence about the summer of 1967. The persona is denied a job at the bank where his father, a war hero, works. He takes up with an older woman named Dorothy, and after meeting a hippie named Earl, they begin a cross-country trek to San...

Fiction Before by Mary Grimm. Bonnie got pregnant on her honeymoon at age 20. She and her husband, Allen, were too abashed to buy contraceptives She hadn't planned on being a mother for another six years but she is having the baby now and decides that it will be a girl. Relatives and friends ask...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Books by Kennedy Fraser.

The Talk of the Town From Scratch by Mary D. Kierstead. Talk story about wood-carver David Esterly who is participating in the restoration of foliage carvings by Grinling Gibbons in Hampton Court. The carvings were damaged by fire in 1986. Grinling left Rotterdam for England in 1667. He ended up Master Carver to the Crown. The carvings in Hampton Court...

Jazz by Whitney Balliett.

Poetry Frady Frem Takes It Back by Caroline Fraser. In February of 1984, the United States Marines leave Beirut, and I...

Poetry Belongings by Michael Longley. Because you will suffer soon and die, your choices...

Poetry The Hare by Cynthia Zarin. Singular--Durer's--crouched, alert, stock...