August 23, 1991

The proposed merger of BankAmerica and Security Pacific, the two largest banking companies in California, is the latest in a series of big-bank betrothals that promise cost savings, great riches for shareholders and power for the executives. Consolidation in the banking industry is all the rage because everyone seems to win -- except, perhaps, the consumer and small-business borrowers.

ANOTHER action-packed weekend in New York. So many attractions beckon: stage shows, movies, restaurants, festivals, concerts, parades, exhibitions, the radio. The radio?

It was perhaps the greatest paradox of the failed coup in Moscow that Mikhail S. Gorbachev's presidency was saved by the one man he had done his most to destroy, and that Boris N. Yeltsin had rescued a leader whose downfall he had actively sought. They began as partners at the dawn of perestroika, Mr. Gorbachev as the reformist new chief of the Politburo and Mr. Yeltsin as one of the first recruits to the new leadership. But within two years they had bitterly parted paths, with Mr. Yeltsin cast out of the Kremlin to assume a new role as the persistent demander of radical change and Mr. Gorbachev's role as the seeker of evolutionary change.

A sweetened offer for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich appears to have a good chance of success, analysts said, and should give the troubled publisher a new lease on life by freeing its basically sound businesses from the burden of overwhelming debt. The General Cinema Corporation, a movie theater and retailing concern based in Newton, Mass., raised its bid for Harcourt yesterday to more than $1.5 billion, from the $1.4 billion it offered in January. Moreover, it agreed to pay more to the bondholders, who rejected the earlier offer, and less to Harcourt shareholders.

A TRUE appreciation of art is like good manners: It can exist naturally, but more often it has to be instilled rigorously at a very early age. For those of us with neither talent nor training, a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which claims to be "the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere" (the Hermitage, of the Eastern Hemisphere, is slightly bigger), is one of those edifying New York excursions contemplated only at gunpoint. Which is why I set off in a state of dread for Fifth Avenue at 81st Street to explore one of the most popular tourist attractions in New York City. I had carefully selected a Friday night, lured by expectations of a soothing string quintet, liquor and fewer people. (Friday and Saturday nights, the museum stays open until 8:45 P.M. and chamber music wafts across a softly lighted bar area on the Main Hall balcony.) There was nothing soothing about it.