Comment by William Finnegan. A comment about South Africa. Reporters neglect to note the close association between the ANC's main antagonist--an organization known as Inkatha--and the state. Chief Gatsha Buthelezei, the leader of Inkatha, is also the leader of KwaZulu, one of South Africa's "self-governing"tribal Bantustans. He is, in other...

The Talk of the Town Fishing by Mindy Aloff. Talk story about Petrossian, a fancy restaurant located near Trump Parc. It was founded in Paris in the early twenties and has been associated with the sort of fare that most people would have to mortgage several family members to enjoy: foie gras and truffles from the Perigord, superb fish...

The Talk of the Town Hair by Mary Norris. Talk story about visiting Recine New York, a marble-floored, mirror-walled beauty salon operated by Bob Recine in Chelsea. One of its hairdressers, Vincent, specializes in an Aztec treatment, handed down from the time of Montezuma (Vincent is of Mexican descent). It is a mixture of aloe, garlic, peel...

The Talk of the Town Incentives by David Owen. Talk story about the 53rd annual Premium Incentive Show, at the Javits Center. An incentive is something a company gives to a person in the hope of turning that person into a better customer, distributor, employee, or whatever. Writer lists the free samples acquired during several hours of wandering around...

Fiction You'll Never Eat Lunch On This Continent Again by Adam Gopnik. Parody of Julia Phillips' "You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again," a book recounting drug abuse and back-stabbing in Hollywood. Prefaced with quotations from Stephen Jay Gould, The Washington Post, and Julia Phillips; Gould suggests that dinosaurs ate plants containing psychoactive agents, which were avoided by mammals. The...

Fiction World of Trouble by Tom Drury. Mary Montrose holds the so-called widow's seat on the Grafton town council (her two predecessors were also widows). She considers dog issues her specialty, and once, at a convention in Moline, gave a slide presentation called "Muzzles: What They Can Do--and What They Can't." She has two daughters...

A Reporter at Large LOGGING THE RAIN FOREST by Stan Sesser. Mentioned several times in REPORTER AT LARGE about the Borneo rain forest. The northern third of the island of Borneo is divided into the Malaysian states of Sarawak & Sabah & the oil sultanate of Brunei. Marudi is the last major trading post before the rain forest begins. While there...

The Sporting Scene HOMERIC TALES by Roger Angell. THE SPORTING SCENE about home runs, and spring training. Home runs tend to stop a game--the men on base, the defensive deployments, the pitcher's struggles, the count, the score--has been snipped, and all our attention falls on the hero. Gamewinning homers really slam the door. Kids love this...

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. A recent topic of discussion has been whether the President wil dump his Vice-President, and whether he might rid himself of his highly unpopular chief of staff. This wasn't a new topic, but it had died away for lack of new material until someone spilled the goods--there's quite...

Dancing by Arlene Croce.

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL THE HORRIBLES by Andy Logan. The mayor relased his May 10th doomsday budget, a document which contained many grim provisions for cuts in city services. The Mayor's budget announced that all drug-treatment clinics and all out-patient pharmacies in city hospitals would be closed, that schoolchildren's health programs and programs for reducing the infant...

The Film File A Kiss Before Dying by Michael Sragow. Splat! That’s the sound of one rich twin clapping to the ground. Soon, Matt Dillon, her lover-killer, moves on to her identical sister (Sean Young plays both women). The writer-director, James Dearden, botches Ira Levin’s creepy best-seller about an upwardly mobile psychopath. (This version is even worse than the 1956...

The Film File Oscar by Michael Sragow. Fallen archness. This farce about a Prohibition racketeer named Snaps Provolone (Sylvester Stallone) is the kind of film in which an accountant named Little Anthony (Vincent Spano) is sure to drive an Imperial. As Snaps tries to go legit and marry off his restless daughter, the plot develops a bad...

Poetry A Basket of Chestnuts by Seamus Heaney. There's a shadow boost, a giddy strange assistance...

Poetry You Weren't Crazy and You Weren't Dead by Judith Baumel. Four neat sonnets ago we were twenty...

Poetry Uncertainty by Edward Hirsch. We couldn't tell if it was a fire in the hills...