The Current Cinema BIRD THOU NEVER WERT by Pauline Kael.

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Garrison Keillor. Comment about being isolated from the flow of information about the Presidential campaign while in Europe... To Athens. Some Dukakis bumper stickers outside the airport. Taxis on strike, so rode with a guy with a Dukakis sticker 2000 drachmas, about $15. With the Acropolis visible outside the hotel window, lay...

The Talk of the Town Blessings by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about the fourth annual blessing of the animals at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. St. John's is the seat of the Episcopal Bishop of New York and the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, but it is also a neighborhood church in a poor neighborhood...

A Reporter at Large NOTHING ELSE TO WISH FOR by Susan Sheehan. REPORTER AT LARGE about Else Blangsted, a Hollywood music editor, who was born in Germany. In 1937, at age 17, while she was at school in Switzerland, she gave birth to an illegitimate child. She was falsely told that the baby died. Later that year she left Germany because of...

The Talk of the Town The Globe by Richard Brookhiser. Talk story about the lobby of the News Building, in which there is a gigantic globe, inclined at a proper angle and rotating, and brass strips in the floor, each pointing the direction to some place and giving the distance. The places include Spitsbergen, New Haven, and La Paz. The...

The Sporting Scene WILANDER'S OPEN by Herbert Warren Wind. THE SPORTING SCENE about this year's U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, won by Mats Wilander 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 over defending champion Ivan Lendl. Mentions Bjorn Borg's induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. A long discussion of Mats Wilander's career; he has had a particularly...

Books by John Updike.

Letter from Moscow by Robert Cullen. Tells about Gorbachev's reforms, which are opposed by the Stalinist element in Soviet society. A letter to the editor of the Moscow newspaper "Sovetskaya Rossiya" by a chemistry teacher from Leningrad named Nina Andreeva mentioned some of the excesses of glasnost that troubled her, particularly the vilification of Stalin. The...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Comment by James Lardner. Comment about the Presidential campaign between George Bush & Michael Dukakis & the role of Bush's aides in his public stands... There was a time, not so many elections ago, when campaign managers, pollsters & media consultants rated hardly a mention in the press--when the coverage of a Presidential...

Fiction We by Mary Grimm. Story about a woman who lives in a suburb with her 2 children and her best friend Suzanne who also has 2 children. At first, narrator was pleased to be married, but then it changed somehow - she and her husband didn't want to spend all their time alone together and...

Obituary by Roger Angell. Obituary of Charles Addams, who died on Thursday, Sept. 29, 1988. He published his first drawing for this magazine in Feb., 1932 & the most recent one just three weeks ago. His work comprised more than 1300 cartoons and covers...

Poetry Among Bells by W. S. Merwin. At the top of the dark...

Poetry The Sorry Creatures in this Countryside by Elizabeth Macklin. Under some rushing, creaking trees are...