Comment by Mark Danner. Comment about Gary Sick's charges that the Reagan campaign colluded with the Iranian government in 1980 not to release the hostages in Teheran until Carter was defeated. In mid-April of this year, Sick--an adjunct professor of Middle Eastern politics at Columbia University, who had had responsibility for Iran...

The Talk of the Town No Buffalo Idea by Michael Rubiner. Talk story about the Firefighter's Friend, a store devoted to firefighting memorabilia, on Lafayette Street, between Prince and Spring. Nate Freedman, the owner, signed a ten-year lease on his printing shop next door, plus two adjacent storefronts. The printing shop is just up the street from a firehouse attached...

The Talk of the Town Waiting for Keith by Jane Stern. Talk story about an aspiring rock band in Weston, Conn., who waited in vain to be heard by Keith Richards, of the Rolling Stones, who lives in the area. They played on the Memorial Day weekend at a fair on the law outside Weston's elementary. Tells about the band which...

The Talk of the Town Special by Susan Orlean. Talk story about attending a cattle call for child models held at the Columbus Pre School and Gym by a children's modelling agency called Closeups Kids. Writer tells about six of the children and their mothers. Michael Weinstein, a portrait and fashion photographer who is helping to judge the applicants...

Fiction Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship, Santa Fe, January, 1492 by Salman Rushdie. Columbus arrives as a supplicant at the court of Queen Isabella of Spain, hoping for cash and three tall ships. When the Queen asks him what he desires, he bows over her hand and murmurs, "Consummation." The Queen is offended. Columbus becomes known at Isabella's court for his colorful clothes...

Fiction No Place by Edna O'Brien. The protagonist is having an affair with a man named Duncan, whose two passions are the desert and the theatre. On Saturday nights she has wild parties at her house in London, for his friends and hangers-on. He proposes that they journey to Morocco for a few days, and...

Profiles LIVING LARGE by Susan Orlean. A PROFILE of Fred Brathwaite, who is also known as Fab Five Freddy. Peter Dougherty is now the director of on-air promotion for MTV Europe. He gave a recommendation for Braithwaite to VJ a new rap show on MTV. "All the time we were putting the show together, I...

A Reporter at Large II-CHINATOWN by Gwen Kinkead. Mentioned several times in REPORTER AT LARGE about New York's Chinatown. Nancy Ryan, who began working in Chinatown in 1976, after graduating from Yale Law School is a historian of the Chinatown gangs. She has prosecuted more of their members than anybody else in the city. She told the writer...

The Current Cinema by Terrence Rafferty.

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Tells about the current controversy over the anti-job-discrimination civil-rights bill. Writer tells history of civil rights, starting in 1964, with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Then, in 1971, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision called Griggs v. Duke Power Co., greatly broadened the sweep...

Books by Naomi Bliven.

The Film File An Angel at My Table by Terrence Rafferty. Based on the autobiography of the New Zealand novelist and poet Janet Frame. The film covers the first forty years or so of the writer’s life—she was born in 1924—and takes close to three hours to tell the story. When it’s all over, you feel that you know far too...

Poetry The Lumens by Sharon Olds. He is better, he is dying a little more slowly...

Poetry Decorator Show House by Emily Rechnitz. Chrome locks gleam...

Poetry The Revenant by James Lasdun. Jet lag, a jump-cut dawn, distempered...