Fiction For Immediate Release by Veronica Geng. A Political Statement Hand-Distributed on the Sidewalk in Front of the Russian Tea Room) Story starts with a quote from the N.Y Times about a Soviet journalist who defected to Britain last year but returned to Moscow after signing a contract with a N.Y. publisher to write a book...

The Current Cinema FEVER DREAM/ECHO CHAMBER by Pauline Kael.

The Talk of the Town Relentless and Absolute by Jane Boutwell. Talk story about gridlock. Writer accompanied Samuel Schwartz, the city's deputy transport commissioner, for traffic operations, on his morning rounds on Dec. 14, to observe how the city had mobilized its forces to keep things moving in midtown. It was the first Gridlock Alert day of the holiday period...

Concert Records / Popular Music by Winthrop Sargeant.

Fiction Haggie by Michael Campbell. Story about the writer's family, the Protestant Campbells of Dublin, Ireland, and particularly about his Aunt Haggie. His grandfather, Lord Glenavy, was a lawyer and the chairman of the first Senate of the Irish Free State. Writer's father was a lawyer and later Governor of the Bank of Ireland, and...

Comment by Garrison Keillor. A friend writes that a little business called him to San Francisco a few weeks ago. It was about two hours' worth of business and he managed to work it up into a full two-day itinerary so as to justify the long flight, and then he flew out a...

Our Footloose Correspondents PEANUT-BUTTER NOTES: ORGANOLEPSIS IN FREDONIA by James Stevenson. OUR REGIONAL CORRESPONDENTS about Red Wing Company in Fredonia, N.Y., which manufactures world-class peanut butter. Writer drives from his home in Connecticut to Red Wing's plant in Fredonia. George Pilgrim, the plant manager, gives writer a tour of the 300,000 square-foot Red Wing Plant, showing writer where they...

The Talk of the Town M.le Ministre by Lincoln Caplan. Talk story about Jack Lang, who is France's Minister of Culture. Lang was in town recently for a three-day business trip. On Saturday at the River Cafe beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, M. Lang posed against the Manhattan skyline for a cover photograph for Paris Match. Tells of M. Lang's...

Books by Susan Lardner.

The Talk of the Town An American Dilemma by William McKibben. Talk story about last month's ceremony marking the "rededication" of Sixth Avenue as the Avenue of the Americas and honoring with plaques the six nations that have joined the Americas since Western Hemisphere Day in 1960. The six nations include: Dominica, St. Lucia, Belize, Antigua, Barbuda, St. Christopher-Nevis, and...

Annals of Finance THE KICKER by John Brooks. ANNALS OF FINANCE about the government guaranteeing loans to the Chrysler Corporation to save them from bankruptcy. On Sept. 15, 1979, Lee Iacocca, the executive who had joined Chrysler the previous year, asked for guarantees of a billion two hundred million. On Nov. 1st, the Administation proposed that the government...

Poetry Guinea Hens by Dave Smith. They wait where the dirt lane unspools, /round and plump as...

Poetry The Ice Storm by Alice Fulton. It's a world stiff as a principle: /glitter drills both...