Books by L. E. Sissman.

The Talk of the Town Sic Transit by Burton Bernstein. A magificently turbanned Sikh entered a Madison Ave. bus at 43 St. A few stops later, a middle-aged N.Y. woman got on. She spotted her counterpart & he looked up from his newspaper. Then he smiled and motioned to her to take the seat next to him. Until the...

The Talk of the Town Three Musical Gatherings by George W. S. Trow. Talk story about three gatherings. One was a street festival on Lenox Ave. called "It's Nation Time". It was not so much a street festival as it was street musical theatre. All the entertainment was presented from the New York City Showmobile. "It's Nation Time" was put together by Kimako...

The Talk of the Town by Lawrence Treat. Affluent-Society sign observed at Martha's Vineyard airport: AIRPLANES WASHED AND WAXED FREE ESTIMATES REASONABLE RATES...

Fiction The Swastika On Our Door by Alice Adams. Karen Washington finds an old photograph of her husband Roger & his brother Richard sitting in a nightclub with a girl sitting between them. Roger was fat, intelligent, & secure. His brother was thin, intelligent, & miserable. He had been born with a defective heart that made him sickly his...

The Talk of the Town Bibliophile by Donald A. E. Beer. A young friend of ours is a clerk in a large midtown bookstore. The other day a lady entered the shop and asked if he could recommend some nicely bound thick books to fill out a shelf. He frowned, and the lady sensed his disapproval. "Well, it's really not so...

The Current Cinema The London Hitch by Penelope Gilliatt. This director's prewar work in England is being shown at the Museum of Modern Art. Writer tells about an interview with him at his home in Bel Air, Calif. Mentions some of the films being shown. Long critique of "The Lodger...

Profiles RANGER by John McPhee. PROFILE of George Hartzog, Director of the National Park Service. The 50-year-old Park Service has had only 7 directors, & Hartzog is the 2nd to come up from ranger. His 2 principal goals are to maintain the Park system's vast existing apparatus & at the same time to...

Comment by Garrison Keillor. We have tried to follow the news of the dollar's decline in recent weeks, and of the efforts to shore it up, but something in us refuses to receive the information. In our heart, the dollar is pegged at the value it had when we were young. It is worth...

The Talk of the Town On The Street by Gerald Jonas. Talk story about street peddlers at Grand Army Plaza, located around the equestrian statue of Gen. Sherman between 59 & 60 Steets on Fifth Ave. Except for a few licensed food concessionaires the area is officially off limits to peddlers, who are fined for hawking their wares in the midtown...

The Race Track Back to Belmont by G. F. T. Ryall. From all accounts, the Off-Track Betting Corp. is doing all right. It has violated a cardinal rule of bookmaking, however. When the computer sulked the other day and it wasn't possible to transmit to the tracks a bunch of bets on the Saratoga races and the trots at Roosevelt...

Letter from Saigon by Robert Shaplen. Tells about Pres. Thieu's maneuverings for his reelection in the Oct. 3rd Presidential election, &about the Aug. 29 House of Rep. elections, in which the opposition gained strength. The Vietnamese Supreme Court & Thieu have now made official what earlier seemed likely: by formally removing from the ballot V...

The Talk of the Town U. S. O. by E. J. Kahn. Talk story about the U.S.O. clubhouse on 45th St. Called the General Douglas MacArthur Memorial Center, the place now receives 500,000 visitors a year, 3/4 of them servicemen and the rest their dependents or girl friends. The executive director, Robert Riddell, said that the U.S.O. has changed radically in the...

Books by L. E. Sissman.

Fiction The Mothball Fleet by David Barthelme. Just after dawn, a man in a small outboard sees the mothball fleet-40 destroyers, 4 light cruisers, 2 heavy destroyers, & a carrier-sailing down the Hudson River. He leaves his boat & climbs onto the lead destroyer. A man in uniform steps out of the chartroom & says...

Poetry Address of Soul to Body by Robert Penn Warren. You've toughed it out pretty well, old Body, done...

Poetry Breath by Philip Levine. Who hears the humming...