Performance Einstein at the Met by Wallace Shawn. Talk story about the preparations for the premiere performance of the avant-garde opera by Philip Glass (music) and Robert Wilson(visual aspects) at the Metropolitan Opera. The opera came here from a triumphal tour of 7 European cities and lasts 4 hours and 45 minutes. Describes the setting up...

The Current Cinema Hot Air by Pauline Kael. Full-column review of the Paddy Chayefsky film, "Network", directed by Sidney Lumet...

Fiction Three Places by W. S. Merwin. Description of an old woman who has lived by herself, up the hill, her husband and children gone. She made shirts for people and sometimes joined the women's sewing group. She remembered things no one else could and referred the passing weather to the great disasters. She spoke of the...

Fiction Remembered Letters by Ted Walker. Several letters encountered or written by the narrator over the course of his life: one to the Dalai Lama written when he was 13, returned undelivered; one to T.S. Eliot, returned to him with notes by Eliot; a letter from a friend Roger from Gough Island in the South Atlantic...

The Talk of the Town Quilts by Geoffrey T. Hellman. Talk story about "A Child's Comfort: Baby and Doll Quilts in American Folk Art," a loan exhibit at the Museum of American Folk Art of 64 quilts made between 1830 and 1976, mostly in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. Quilting originated in Egypt more than 5000 years ago. In...

Dancing Denishawn Without Spirit by Arlene Croce.

The Air (On Television) What We Do in the Dar by Michael J. Arlen.

The Talk of the Town Literary Gathering by Hendrik Hertzberg. Talk story about a party at the Strand Book Store in honor of the publication, by Burt Britton, who presides over the review-copy department of the Strand, of his book, "Self-Portrait: Book People Picture Themselves," (Random House, $12.50.) The book is a collection of more than 700 self...

Books Back from the Farthest Rim by Lis Harris.

Cartoon Famous Spats by Dean Vietor. Four cartoons with text describing spats between famous men: a snowball fight between William James and George Santayana; a pushing and shoving bout between Charles Darwin and Fedor Dostoevski; an arm wrestling match between Shakespeare and Sir Francis Drake; a brawl between Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck in...

Comment by Richard Harris. One of the dubious traditions of the press is the "honeymoon" it accords incoming Presidents. Tells about this danger as it applied to Richard Nixon. Hamilton Jordan, Carter's campaign manager, said the new Secretary of the Treasury was "likely to be someone from the business community". Writer cites the corruption...

A Reporter at Large THE LAST PLACE by Harold T. P. Hayes. REPORTER AT LARGE about the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania, E. Africa. It is a last gathering place for a diversity of African wildlife. 5100 sq. miles is a national park, where animals have priority over human beings. Today scientists see it as a sort of ecological paradise not only because...

Musical Events Petit Bayreuth by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Einstein at the Met by Wallace Shawn. Talk story about preparations for the avant-grade opera "Einstein on the Beach" in its premier oerformance at the Met. Jane Hermann, who works for Anthony Bliss, the Met's executive director, has been involved in bringing the opera to the Met...

The Theatre WOEBEGONE BEGINNERS by Brendan Gill.

The Race Track Newest Star by G. F. T. Ryall. On Nov. 16th at the dispersal of John M. Olin's breeding stock at the Keeneland Sale, Franklin Groves, the head of a heavy-construction firm in Minneapolis, gave a million dollars - the highest price ever paid for a broodmare - for Queen Sucree, the dam of the 1974 Kentucky Derby winner...

Jazz New York Notes by Whitney Balliett.

Poetry New York by Thom Gunn. It wasn't ringworm he...

Poetry The French Night by Herbert Morris. Seeing them merely moving from the car...

Poetry Autumn by Robert Mazzocco. The moon's coiled in barbed wire now...

Poetry Calder's Hands by John Updike. In the little movie...