Some of the magazine's writing is enjoyable, although much of its fiction is unreadable. But the traditional New Yorker tone, which is largely determined by the magazine's editorial sensibilities, has been irretrievably lost. The magazine that Brown now edits, while of occasional interest, is no longer the New Yorker. Its cachet has been diminished, its imprimatur subtly devalued.

Perhaps no one can do the job with which Brown has been charged. Perhaps at this cultural moment, there exists no place for the old New Yorker. Perhaps there is no need for the place once occupied by the New Yorker. Its role of imparting gentility, as if by osmosis, to receptive readers who might need it, has been eradicated. Mercifully, into the breach has stepped the triumvirate of The Atlantic, The Spectator and The New York Review of Books. Perhaps, too, Brown's new magazine may at some point become an indispensable part of American literary life.

On September 27, Tina Brown and her husband Harold Evans, president and publisher of Random House Trade Publishing Group, hosted a party at the New York Public Library to celebrate the publication of Richard Avedon's newest book. The usual suspects, leftovers from the '80s, were present in their sequined splendor, glorying in their celebrity.

For many Americans the '80s ended when, on a freeway in Los Angeles, the beating of a black motorist by white police officers was videotaped.

On West 43rd Street, the '90s have not yet begun.

Lorraine A. Lezama misses particularly the five-part series on soybeans.