Singular

In the adrenaline-stoked realm of vertical rock climbing, Derek Geoffrey Hersey was regarded as one of the world's best, a daredevil among daredevils who did not use a rope. But for reasons that authorities said Sunday may never be known, the 36-year-old Hersey plunged to his death from the granite face of Yosemite National Park's Sentinel Rock. A native of Manchester, England, Hersey for the past decade had lived in Boulder, Colo.

Second Person Singular A Novel Sayed Kashua Grove Press: 346 pp., $25

Aproper dilemma needs two horns; and, it would appear from Howard Gardner's provocative new book, the dilemma of contemporary education is no exception. The horns, in this case, are freedom and discipline. The question before the house is how to incorporate both into one's educational scheme without slighting either.

"World's Fair" is E. L. Doctorow's portrait of the artist as a young child. The author's alter-ego, Edgar Altschuler, grows into an awareness that the world stretches far beyond the protective confines of a Bronx Jewish household. It was a quieter passage than Stephen Daedalus' vehement breakout from a constricted Dublin youth, and conducted with far greater cautiousness.

Gerald McCabe, a furniture designer whose passion for woodworking and love of music led to the creation of the Santa Monica folk music institution McCabe's Guitar Shop, died Sunday in Eugene, Ore., two days after suffering a heart attack. He was 82. McCabe left his namesake operation before it became celebrated for the intimate concerts that have been held there for decades, but in its earliest days the store, on Pico Boulevard a block west of its current location, played a crucial role in the evolution of the Southern California folk music community.

Some came dressed in black for mourning, but large swaths of the crowd at Staples Center for the Michael Jackson memorial Tuesday honored the singer as they always had -- with T-shirts that bore his image and sartorial tributes to his famous style. Family and close friends of the late pop singer donned dark, somber colors. Brooke Shields delivered a moving tribute in a simple black shift dress. Usher, Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant wore sharp black suits and black ties.

In the middle of the well-groomed block on South Ridgeley Drive--a self-assured, composed neighborhood in the Miracle Mile district--there is a two-story Monterey-Colonial duplex for sale. The postcard the Realtors mailed out to advertise the property presents an image of half a house. On view are a pair of plantation doors flanked by shutters opening onto a pink-hued second-floor balcony. The first floor is entirely hidden behind an 8-foot hedge.

Joanna Lennon's amateurish, occasionally incoherent review of my first book, "The Singular Generation" (View, Nov. 13) completely missed the point of my book. "The Singular Generation" is the first serious attempt to write a corrective portrait of a generation too often dismissed by the media and society as yuppies or self-serving careerists. In fact, her comments give one pause as to whether she really read the book or merely skimmed the jacket copy. She writes: "Urbanska . . . thinks singulars are swell just as they are. They hold the answers to salvation in the future.