December 21, 1990

A teen-ager was killed and another was wounded outside a Bronx junior high school yesterday when two teen-age gangs got into a fight "about girls," the police said. What began as a lunchtime face-off between the loosely organized gangs, one of them known as the Vamps, quickly escalated into what one of the Vamps described as a "rumble." He said both sides quickly pulled out knives and hammers as the fracas spilled across Third Avenue.

WITH 1990 winding toward a close, it's a good time to look back on the year in fiction, at some of the issues and ideas that have preoccupied imaginative writers, as well as at their individual achievements. It's also a good time to reassess some of this year's most notable works of fiction: not only is Christmas coming up, but also given the short shelf life of hard-cover books these days, some of them might soon be difficult to find. In a year in which writers -- from Salman Rushdie to Vaclav Havel to Mario Vargas Llosa (all of whom, incidentally, published new books this year) -- were frequently in the news, it's not surprising that many of the most provocative new novels dealt with large political and social issues, and the consequences of those issues on individual lives.

In a remarkable technological turnabout, American companies have moved from laggards to leaders in the worldwide competition to develop the next generation of television. Both Japan and Europe remain ahead of the United States in introducing the first operational systems of high-definition television, which provides a picture that has a crispness and a clarity comparable to that of films.

The First National Bank of Chicago cut its prime lending rate to 9 1/2 percent yesterday, becoming the largest bank to lower the closely watched rate since the Federal Reserve began pushing other interest rates lower six weeks ago. The First Chicago Corporation, which owns the bank, is the nation's 12th-largest banking company. Despite the Fed's lead, large banks have been slow to reduce their prime rates. The only other banking companies among the 30 largest in the country that have lowered rates are the First Fidelity Bancorporation of Lawrenceville, N.J., which cut its rate to 9 3/4 percent on Monday and the Norwest Bancorporation, Minneapolis, which adopted a 9 3/4 percent rate on Tuesday.

WHEN one thinks of Giorgio Armani, many images come to mind: the actor Richard Gere rifling through an enormous closet of Armani suits and shirts in "American Gigolo," or the earnest double-breasted G-men in "The Untouchables." One could also mention the "power suits" of the 1980's: aggressive, big-shouldered models often worn by otherwise sensitive, culturally with-it New Men. Conversely, in 1990, there is the new soft silhouette of the Armani "slouch suits," mostly without shoulder padding, presumably to be worn by more confident corporate types, guys who have made it.