Fiction The Treatment by Daniel Menaker. Lenny Singer is a Manhattan prep-school teacher with problems. His mother died when he was six, his father and he are barely on speaking terms, and his girlfriend left him two months ago. He gets conned into giving a fat woman a token for the bus. He sees a...

The Talk of the Town Birds by Jane Boutwell. Talk story about staying in Pompano Beach, Florida, for a week. Writer wondered about the saturation point of a state that is, by its own count, receiving 800 new residents a day. So far the land boom along the coast shows few signs of slowing down, but inland, where enormous...

A Reporter at Large I-LOOKING FOR A SHIP by John McPhee. REPORTER AT LARGE about the U.S. Merchant Marine. Writer accompanied a merchant mariner named George Anderson Chase. He had known Andy for several years & had been to his home in Maine. In the evolving decline of the U.S. Merchant Marine, qualified people seeking work greatly outnumber the jobs to...

Fiction Man's Friend by Primo Levi. The story tells of the discovery of the patterned arrangement of spiny cellprojections on the surface of tapeworms. Bernard W. Losurdo, professor of Assyriology at Michigan State University, decodes the patterns. Some are rudimentary and fragmented, but others are more complex. Losurdo translates the patterns into poetic passages that express...

The Talk of the Town Trial by Mark Hertsgaard. Talk story about the trial of Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter; mainly about the line outside the courtroom for spectators. Only 13 non-press, non-government observers were allowed in the courtroom. Tells about the various different kinds of spectators, including the press, intelligence watchdogs, family members, congressional aides, and...

Comment by Lawrence Weschler. Comment about the Russian computer game, Tetris, and Mikhail Gorbachev's position as leader of that turbulent country. The game is played by manipulating oddly shaped pieces as they fall into a sort of silo so that they will not leave any trapped white space. When a solid row is filled...

The Theatre A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA by Mimi Kramer.

Letter from Managua by Alma Guillermoprieto. Tells about the election of opposition leader Violeta Chamorro over the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. She leads a coaltion of 14 tiny, squabbling parties called UNO: her daughter Cristiana's husband, Antonio Lacayo became her campaign director. Tells about an incident in which the Vice-Presidential candidate's chief campaign adviser, in full...

Books by Naomi Bliven.

The Talk of the Town No End by Barry Singer. Talk story about 60 year old Frank Driggs and his collection of jazz photographs. The writer visits the basement of his home in Flatlands, Brooklyn. Driggs shows the writer photos of Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and the like, and tells his own personal history. He began to collect...

The Current Cinema OUT OF THIS WORLD by Terrence Rafferty.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Poetry The Letter by Jane Kenyon. Bad news arrives in her distinctive hand...

Poetry Abandoned Houses South of Stafford by Stephen Sandy. Although you said there wasn't time I stopped...