Comment Tales of the Tapes by Hendrik Hertzberg. A signed Comment on the use of audiotapes, videotapes, and other technology to expose instances of police brutality. The riots in Washington Heights last July were set off by Patrolamn Michael O'Keefe's shooting of a young man. An audiotape revealing O'Keefe screaming in terror is inconsistent with the supposed picture...

The Talk of the Town Social Engineering by Helen Thorpe. Talk story about video artist Brian Springer. Surveillance is a favorite theme of his. When cellular phones first came out, he monitored cellular-phone conversations. At that time it was easy and legal to do so. In another project, he held impromptu conference calls with numbers selected from the phone...

The Talk of the Town Big Shoes by Helen Thorpe. Talk story about the retirement of Alistair Cooke after 22 seasons as host of "Masterpiece Theatre" on PBS. Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of the show, has a list of 150 possible replacements for Cooke...

The Talk of the Town Flash by Benjamin Brantley. Talk story about Thierry W. Despont, a French-born, Manhattan-based architect and artist. He wears watches with at least two analog faces, so he can mentally coexist in the different time zones where he has projects underway. Not having to compute the difference in his head, he says, helps...

The Talk of the Town Seduction by Francis Wheen. Signed Talk story about William Shawcross's new authorized biography of Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch was paid a million dollars by Random House for his autobiography, but he abandoned that project and turned to Shawcross, who was at work on an unauthorized biography of Murdoch. Shawcross's London publisher, Carmen Callil, had commissioned...

The Talk of the Town Success by Stephen Schiff. Talk story about filmmaker Michael Moore. Tells about "Roger & Me" which raged at General Motors for plant closings and layoffs that according to Moore, destroyed Flint's economy. The movie achieved the largest box-office gross in documentary history, and it made Moore famous. Too famous. He could no longer...

Onward and Upward with the Arts ACTOR FROM THE SHADOWS by Joan Juliet Buck. ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS about actor Daniel Day-Lewis. He was borning Apr. 29, 1957. His father was the poet Cecil Day -Lewis. He has become one of the most startling actors of his generation... Tells about his estranged lifestyle. Tells about the importance of his father and...

The Sky Line ENDANGERED SPECIES by Brendan Gill.

Reflections THE CHILDREN OF MALCOLM by Marshall Frady. REFLECTIONS about Malcolm X. In the midst of what seemed the high moral adventure of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s nonviolent civil-rights campaign, Malcolm X appears as some marginal shadow figure of wrath, always paralleling King's progress. HE is still hailed by many as the most authentic voice of...

The Talk of the Town Mailbox by James W. Butcher. Letter deriding the Talk of the Town's coverage of the Republican Convention...

Fiction The Black Lights by Thom Jones. The narrator, a Marine Sergant who served in Vietnam, is admitted to a military neuro-psych ward at Camp Pendelton After he is K.O.ed in a boxing match, he is left with a lesion on his left temporal lobe, continual seizures and hallucinatory spells always seeing the black lights before...

From the Campaign Trail CLINTON'S HELLRAISER by Garry Wills. FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL about Bill Clinton's campaign adviser, James Carville. He is an abrupt consultant, all his sentences unfinished, all his explitives undeleted, sounding only partially educated amid Clinton's Yalies and Oxonians. His narrow-set eyes disappear when his face bunches--often--in laughter or argument, or when he...

The Air (On Television) DESIGNING COUPLE by James Wolcott.

The Theatre THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT by Edith Oliver.

The Art World (The Art Galleries) by Adam Gopnik.

Books by Paul Berman.

Shouts & Murmurs THE THREE-MARTINI DEBATE by Christopher Buckley. SHOUTS AND MURMURS about a Presidential debate over martinis between George Bush and Bill Clinton... "They both come to my house. We serve them a Martini. And we have an exchange between the two." --Tom Brokaw in the Times, proposing an alternative Presidential-debate format. Brokaw: Mr. President, Governor, thank...

Poetry Rio De Janeiro by John Updike. Too good to be true--a city that empties...

Poetry Keeping Going by Seamus Heaney. The piper coming from far away is you...

Poetry White Violets In South Hadley by Cynthia Zarin. So many of them wicking the lawns...