MOSQUITO By Gayl Jones Jones made her name in the 1970s with brutal tales of sexual abuse and violence. So when she came forth with last year's The Healing, a quiet, sweetly engaging novel that took a National Book Award nomination, readers found themselves surprised as much as delighted. Jones returns with the story of a black female truck driver in south Texas who winds up in an effort to harbor border crossers. Mosquito is a carnival of digression and free association, though, with the plot hijacked for paragraphs, if not pages, by muddled tangents. Questions of racial identity provide an interesting subtext to the story, but they aren't probed much. Still, in rare moments, Jones' virtuosity grins up at us, leaving hope that this is just a frustrating detour on the road to better storytelling. BY TAMALA M. EDWARDS

C I N E M A
STILL CRAZY Directed by Brian Gibson They broke up 20 years ago, victims of the apocalyptic burnout endemic to '70s rock bands. Now Strange Fruit is back for one fractious nostalgia trip to make a few quid and see if the flame still burns. This retro comedy, cannily written by The Commitments' Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement, gives such fine British actors as Bill Nighy, Stephen Rea, Jimmy Nail and Bruce Robinson the chance to strut, scowl, sing some jaunty tunes (by '70s survivors Mick Jones, Steve Dagger and Jeff Lynne) and define what it means to be mates in a middle age the rockers never thought they'd live to see. Some of the laughs are too easy, but there are lots of them; and by its satisfying end, Still Crazy is the full, feel-good monty. BY RICHARD CORLISS

M U S I C
BACH-BUSONI, BEETHOVEN, SCHUMANN Evgeny Kissin The latest from a young man who is without question Russia's most exciting pianist, this recital disc pairs two romantic masterpieces, the Bach-Busoni Chaconne and Schumann's Kreisleriana, plus a pair of shorter pieces by Beethoven (Rondo for Piano in G Major is one). These spectacular performances--big-boned and expansive, yet piercingly direct whenever they need to be--rank among the very best on record. Not since Vladimir Horowitz was in his absolute prime have we been privy to classical piano playing quite as bold, quite as ambitious as this. BY TERRY TEACHOUT

T E L E V I S I O N
THE '60S NBC, Feb. 7, 8 Take one fictional Ozzie-and-Harriet-like Irish-Catholic couple and their three teenagers. Put them through the crucible of the sexual and drug revolutions, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, women's lib, Watts and Woodstock. Then toss in newsreel footage of every conceivable major event that occurred during this tumultuous time. Now squeeze all this into a four-hour mini-series and try to tell a credible story. Ludicrous? Yet nbc pretty well manages the feat. Enacted by a solid cast and enhanced by a smartly used greatest-hits soundtrack, The '60s is clear-eyed, compassionate and surprisingly affecting. What it lacks in depth it makes up for in breadth. BY WILLIAM TYNAN

T H E A T E R
JITNEY By August Wilson. Before embarking on his acclaimed cycle of plays on black life in the 20th century (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson), Wilson penned this early work about the denizens of a gypsy-cab company in Pittsburgh, Pa., in the late 1970s. Now, given a "definitive" rewrite by the author, it has been revived in a superlative production at the Center Stage, in Baltimore, Md. With little obvious effort, Wilson rivets our attention on the daily struggles of a half-dozen ordinary but entirely individual characters while gradually homing in on the explosive conflict between two: the cab company's owner and his estranged son, just released from prison after 20 years. Unusual for a Wilson play, Jitney loses some momentum in the second act; but it's still a major work by a major artist. BY RICHARD ZOGLIN

L E T T E R S
LETTERS Millennium Madness
"The doomsday prophets need to get a life! In a universe that is 15 billion years old, the entire era of human existence is a nano-blip."
JENNIFER L. WOOD
Bakersfield, Calif.

When 2000 arrives, our undoing won't be a massive computer problem [Y2KY2KY2KY2KY2KY2K, Jan. 18] but the public's senseless panic triggered by the radical sensationalism surrounding the issue today. Instead of fueling fear, the media should reassure people that the new millennium is not something to be dreaded. But it may be too late. Just imagine what lies in store economically if terrified individuals begin making drastic withdrawals from bank accounts and selling off stocks. We would be better off sitting tight, staying calm and letting the computer programmers do their job rather than getting ready for a Judgment Day that may not come.
ADRIENNE JO ODASSO
Brookville, Pa.

Relax. God does not have a calendar.
HAROLDINE TANDY
Portland, Tenn.

What worries me most is the families you profiled in your millennium-bug cover. One has two rifles, a shotgun and a handgun. Another is buying rolls of toilet paper in Arkansas. While these people are shooting it out over the last piece of toilet tissue on New Year's Day, my family and I will be comfortably watching the Rose Bowl parade with all of our electric appliances working just fine.
DOUGLAS A. HIKADE
Mount Laurel, N.J.

Y2K will be the nonevent of the millennium. The only thing less likely than a catastrophe is that the profiteers who make a fortune off the gullible will refund everyone's money after being hit by "survivor's guilt" in January 2000.
ANDREA CHESNEY
Los Angeles

Oh, now I see. The "story" about Y2K isn't the billions of defective codes in mainframe computers or the 25 billion to 50 billion embedded chips. The blame doesn't go to shortsighted programmers or managers who procrastinated until it was too late to fix the problem or to a government that knew about the Y2K situation in 1995 but did little about it until 1998. The real issue with Y2K is American Christians who see serious potential problems and are making rational preparations. What an interesting spin you put on Y2K.
LOREN JACOBS
West Bloomfield, Mich.

There may be some computer problems as the year 2000 dawns, but the notion that there will be cosmic events in the supernatural realm is absolutely ludicrous. Here we are approaching the 21st century, and our folk culture is still stuck in a medieval mind-set, with all its superstitions. Jan. 1, 2000, will be just one more day in the life of Planet Earth.
JOSEPH W. ADAMS
Johnson City, Tenn.

Chris Taylor mentioned in his article "The History and the Hype" that "no one in the computer industry wanted to rock the boat..." by confronting the Y2K problem. Well, Apple Computer did, and thanks to the makers of Macintosh, Mac users do not have to worry about the Y2K bug in the operating system. Just imagine manpower expenses for those who did not rock the boat--whole nations could be given a free computer for every citizen.
WOLFGANG SCHUBERT
Tien Mou, Taiwan

I did not read in TIME any sensible explanation of why ICBMs and power plants (among other computerized junk) should go crazy on Jan. 1, 2000. If your experts cannot explain the time-bomb scare story, then they bring support to the concept of supernatural powers impacting the whole of information technology. I am going Quaker!
CHRISTIAN ENLART
Paris

How could the world collapse? Since Microsoft started to sell Windows, everybody has got used to collapsing systems. Every day a lot of computers break down, and it's not a big deal. In the year 2000 we'll have to face some new computer viruses sending frightening messages to us like HERE IS THE END OF THE WORLD,
JUMP OUT THE WINDOW ASAP.
GABOR NEMETH Szombathely, Hungary

Your sane pieces on the Y2K epidemic were guilty of a surprising omission. You neglected to address a question burning in the minds of all your readers: Will TIME stop?
GEORGE BROWNSTONE
Vienna

Instead of ridiculing people who are concerned about this computer bug, which can affect big parts of society all over the world, you could have asked the Big Names about the progress their companies have made on the Y2K bug. Can they give us written assurance that their computer systems are ready for the year 2000? Or will it become a big mess?
ANNA LONT
Amsterdam

Lemmings Rush in Where...
How can millions of Americans not see the real issue in President Clinton's behavior [NATION, Jan. 18]? I spent years of my army life involved with the West's nuclear confrontation with the U.S.S.R. That danger may have receded, but the fact remains that the President has responsibility for the lives of millions. Is it asking too much that he keep his mind totally committed to the gigantic tasks entrusted to him?
PETER MACDONALD
Bristol, England

Republicans in the House and the Senate are like a pack of lemmings rushing toward the nearest cliff.
GLORIA CADET
London

Commitment to Science
As the chair of an independent-research national committee that critically assessed the value of a federal Human Genome Project more than a decade ago, I disagree with those critics referred to in your article [THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE, Jan. 11] who assert that the project has been mismanaged. In fact, the Human Genome Project has been one of the most productive programs in all of science, owing to its commitment to catalyzing cooperative scientific work and making all data freely available, while involving a wide cross section of the research community in its rigorous planning process.
BRUCE ALBERTS, PRESIDENT
National Academy of Sciences
Washington

Cancer Rates Accessed
Your report on Jan Schlictmann, the real-life civil-action lawyer [ENVIRONMENT, Jan. 18], stated that some neighbors of Suffolk County, N.Y.'s Brookhaven National Laboratory suspect a connection between the lab and the childhood cancer rhabdomyosarcoma. But a yearlong study commissioned by the county found that cancer rates near the lab were no different from those elsewhere, and that rhabdomyosarcoma seldom occurs near the lab.
ROGER GRIMSON
Department of Preventive Medicine
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Stony Brook, N.Y.

Don't Worry About Jesse!
If you are going to question Jesse Ventura's qualifications to be Governor of Minnesota [NATION, Jan. 18], you are going to have to define qualification. For the past month, I've been watching more than 500 "qualified" bozos scrambling through the hallowed halls of Congress trying to figure how to get out of the mudhole the House Judiciary Committee dumped them in. And you worry about Jesse? Ventura is a joy who got elected with votes, not big bucks. He not only doesn't owe anybody anything, he doesn't have to protect anybody--not that he couldn't. Jesse will do just fine.
JACQUELYN RYSKAMP
Baldwin, Mich.