Comment Comment, Pt. I by Nicholson Baker. Comment about an ice storm in Rochester, N.Y. On the night of Mar. 3rd, a Sunday, some sort of strange, gentle, super-chilled rain came down over a large part of western New York. It coated every power line with a perfect cylinder of ice nearly an inch thick, from...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Mindy Aloff. Obituary of prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn. She retired from the stage years ago, but the recent news of her death at the age of 71 hit her American fans hard anyway. During her career as a professional dancer, which spanned nearly half a century, she helped to make the Royal...

The Talk of the Town Dan's People by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about interactive cable TV show, "Dan's Apartment." The show was put together by Daniel B. O'Sullivan, a graduate student at the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program in the Tisch School of the Arts. First, you see a picture of Dan's living room, and then you hear a man's voice...

The Talk of the Town Just Visiting by Guy Trebay. Talk story about visiting the Tombs prison, with its new auxiliary wing. The buildings standing astride White St. on the east side of Centre St. are known officially as the Manhattan Detention Complex. The Tombs, named for its Egyptian-style architecture, was built in 1835. In 1974, Judge Morris E...

Fiction Across the Bridge by Mavis Gallant. In Fourth Republic Paris, Sylvie Castelli, the young daughter of a wealthy doctor, is engaged to marry Arnaud Pons, a young man of aristocratic background. While walking with her mother across the bridge from the Place de la Concorde on their way to the Palais Bourbon, where they are to...

A Reporter at Large THE YUGOSLAV IDEA by Milton Viorst. REPORTER AT LARGE about Yugoslavia made up of six republics & 24 million people. Living within these republics are several dozen ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. Since its founding, after the First World War, Yugoslavia has been tormented by ethnic antagonisms. The new Assembly Pres. in Croatia, Zarko Domljan, said...

Jazz by Whitney Balliett.

The Theatre FINE LINES by Edith Oliver.

Letter from Europe by Jane Kramer. Describes the French reaction to the Persian Gulf war. Under Giscard and Chirac, a fortune in aid and arms and investments started going to Iraq. Iraq, in turn, guaranteed France's oil... Iraq "belonged" to France, the way, it was understood, Saudi Arabia belonged to America, and Iran, and later, Kuwait...

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL CITY OF ANGLES by Andy Logan. There was jubiliation at the end of the Persian Gulf War and then it was back to no-fun time in New York. Mayor Dinkins had presented his tentative budget for the next fiscal year, in which he announced that a prospective gap of 2 billion dollars would require him...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Books by John Updike.

Poetry The Silent Generation by Charles Wright. Afternoons in the back yard, our lives like photographs...

Poetry Pattern by David Woo. The rug folded back with a sweep of your hand, revealing...

Poetry Sad Stories Told in Bars: The "Reader's Digest" Version by William Matthews. First I was born and it was tough on Mom...