Incest

What's all the rage? Harper's Katie Roiphe spends a considerable effort this month documenting the incidence of incest in contemporary fiction. With examples drawn from Jane Smiley, Russell Banks and others, she proves her observation to be sharp, but her conclusions leave much lacking.The frequency, she says, proves a trend, and the trend, she figures, is reason for the frequency. We've become a nation of voyeurs and, she decides, of soul-baring weaklings searching for cheap thrills in the headlines.

Sandy Unitas says she remembers her terror -- a 5-year-old huddled behind a high-backed chair, eyes squeezed shut, fingers in her ears. She remembers the sound of coins jangling in her father's pocket, a signal he was approaching. And she remembers her prayer:"Please, Daddy, don't call my name this time. Please. Please."Sandy Unitas, who for 22 years has been known in Baltimore as wife of the legendary Colts quarterback, this weekend took on a new public role: She has declared herself an incest survivor.

PTC Vurt," by Jeff Noon. 352 pages. New York: Crown Publishing. $22In the beginning, back in the 1980s, there was the cyberpunk novel, a science-fiction subgenre that explored the computer-generated worlds of virtual reality. Now, in the 1990s, new authors and recombinant forms are emerging from the corpus of cyberpunk fiction, once dominated by the American writers William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The most prominent newcomer is the Manchester-born Englishman Jeff Noon, whose first novel, a cyber-fairy tale called " Vurt," was this year's winner of Britain's Arthur C. Clarke award for science fiction.

WASHINGTON -- Democratic Gov. Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania said yesterday that he would defy a federal directive requiring state Medicaid programs to pay for abortions in certain cases of rape or incest.He said the federal government had exceeded its authority in trying to override a state law permitting such payment only when the rape or incest has been reported to local law-enforcement or health officials.Pennsylvania thus joins Utah in vowing to disregard parts of the Clinton administration directive.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is weighing whether to delay a requirement that states help pay for abortions in cases of rape or incest because the directive has placed some states in the untenable position of either violating their own laws or losing federal Medicaid funds, officials said yesterday."

Ginny Cook Smith, incest survivor, could have been a guest on "Oprah" or "Geraldo" if Jane Smiley had not made her up.In her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "A Thousand Acres," Ms. Smiley tells this story: the adult Ginny stretches out on her childhood bed, and suddenly images cascade forth. Her body trembles as the teen-age memories of her rapes rush back.The way Ginny first denies the incest but then remembers it bears an uncanny -- and, Ms. Smiley says, unintended -- resemblance to a tale told with numbing frequency on the afternoon talk shows: an adult recovering a long-buried memory of sexual abuse.

Volunteer: CAROLYN BRANNOCKMs. Brannock, who lives north of Westminster, has volunteered since 1986 with the Carroll County chapter of the Unity Group Inc., an organization that provides assistance to battered women and their children.Unity Group volunteers accompany women to court, take them to the doctor, help them find housing, lend a listening ear and generally provide whatever support they can.Organization's comments: "She's very compassionate, but also levelheaded," said Angela M. Lee, founder of the group.

Anne Arundel County police have charged a 50-year-old Montana man with incest and child abuse after his adult daughters claimed that he molested both of them from the time they were 5 years old until they were 18. Part of that time they lived in Glen Burnie.Sheriff's deputies in Flathead County, Mont., arrested the man Thursday after a six-hour standoff at his home in Bigfork. He was extradited Saturday to Anne Arundel County, where he is being held on $500,000 bond at the Detention Center.

Tolstoy was wrong when he said all happy families are alike, but each unhappy one has a unique misery. Even the unhappy families are beginning to seem alike.One day recently, I talked to three parents who are in the throes of ugly wrangles over their children. Each believed a newspaper article could solve everything.A man said his ex-wife's sister's boyfriend had hit his son with a belt, so he wanted full custody. A woman's ex-husband had been awarded unsupervised visitation with their daughter, although he had molested his stepdaughter.