The Talk of the Town Specialty by Michael Dolan. Talk story about a book fair in the Sheraton Centre and Ken Lopez, who specializes in the collection and sale of Vietnam War books. After dodging the draft, Lopez became interested in books on the war while he studied at Goddard College. After college he got a job in Manhattan...

Fiction Spring Fugue by Harold Brodkey. Story about the writer's first impressions/experiences of Spring in New York City. His CD player spins Vivaldi, he notices the flowers at the corner market, he gets a cold. His wife has allergies. He starts getting nosey, has erotic dreams, spends a three day weekend in the country and...

The Current Cinema DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE by Terrence Rafferty.

The Theatre ASPECTS OF VULGARITY by Mimi Kramer.

Books by Edmund Morris.

Around City Hall Happy Land by Andy Logan. The subject that clearly causes Mayor David Dinkins the most pain is the March 25th fire at the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx--the second-worse building fire in city history, in which 87 people--twenty more than in last fall's California eathquake--lost their lives. Tells about...

Reflections JIM AND TAMMY by Frances FitzGerald. REFLECTIONS on televangelists Jim & Tammy Bakker. On Oct. 5, 1989, a jury in the federal district court in Charlotte, N.C. found Jim guilty on 24 counts of fraud & conspiracy. He had bilked his followers out of 158 million dollars & taken more than 3 1/2 million for himself...

Comment by Suzannah Lessard. Comment about self-help groups. Writer accompanies a relative to a conference of a self-help group of bereaved parents--people grieving for a son or a daughter who had died--called The Compassionate Friends. The participants came from all over the Northeast and, because death respects no boundaries, were...

The Talk of the Town Concept by Mindy Aloff. Talk story about writer and friends visiting the New York Earth Room in honor of Earth Day this year. The New York Earth Room is Walter De Maria's famous installation of 250 cubic yards of dirt, which fills a loft-size space at 141 Wooster Street, in SoHo, up to...

The Talk of the Town Urban Rabbit by Caroline Fraser. Talk story about the writer's Dutch rabbit. Writer states that she will not be attending the annual National Dutch Show this year. According to the description in the"American Dutch Rabbit Club Guide Book," it's the kind of event where rabbits are known by numbers tattooed on their ears rather...

Fiction Full Employment by Primo Levi. Simpson is the European Sales rep. for an American office-machine company. He is bored with these machines and with electronic brain research. He tells a friend about his far more profitable project; he communicates with bees, and through them, with other insects. He arbitrates quid pro quo treaties with...

Letter from Jerusalem by Amos Elon. Last December for an hour or so, some 30,000 Israelis and Palestinians held hands and formed a human chain almost 3 miles long all around the Old City walls, chanting, "We want peace! We want peace!" Jerusalem is a mixed Israeli-Palestinian city and is in the very eye of...

Poetry Apology by Erica Funkhouser. You ask if my local shrubbery...

Poetry House Hour by Robert Pinsky. Now the pale honey of a kitchen light...

Poetry Making Breakfast by Mary Stewart Hammond. There's this ritual, like a charm...