Fiction The Concert Party by Mavis Gallant. Steve Burnet, an Anglo-Quebec academic, reflects on his past as a grad student in sleepy Rivebelle, France. There, he and his wife, Lily, socialize with Montreal Canadians, Harry and Edie Lapwing. The four are invited, among other eccentrics, to concerts at the Villa of novelist, Watt Chadwick. Edie and...

The Talk of the Town Whirlwind by Brendan Dealy. Talk story in the form of a holiday journal kept by a repentant young man: Dec. 15th: Old friend gives party. Season's 1st for me. Theme is totally prehistoric. Mollusk jewelry on hostess. Wolly-mammoth centerpiece. Over there, shrimp dip molded to form Pleistocene fish, with black caviar skeleton. Enamelled...

Books by Whitney Balliett.

A Reporter at Large I-THE HOMELESS AND THEIR CHILDREN by Jonathan Kozol. Mentioned at length in REPORTER AT LARGE about the homeless. The rate of child poverty in 1984 was one-third higher than it had been in 1976. The Children's Defense Fund has stated that child poverty, which has increased about 50% since 1969, now affects "nearly one out of every...

Onward and Upward with the Arts VALUE II-CONFUSIONS AND ANXIETIES by Lawrence Weschler. ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS about the trial, in England, of J.S.G. Boggs, a young American artist who likes to draw money(that is, to create fairly exact, correct-scale color representations of existing denominations of actual currency) & then "spend" his drawings(that is, find people who will...

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL RUNNING IN CIRCLES by Andy Logan. A bill was quietly passed forbidding waivers for dual ownership of a television station & a newspaper in the same city. The only person who currently benefits from such waivers is Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-born owner of both the New York "Post" & the local station WNYW-TV... Murdoch...

The Talk of the Town Rollermania by Judy Mellecker. Talk story about attending roller derby contest between the Eastern Express, the home team, and the Midwest Pioneers, the visiting team, at Madison Square Garden. Before the show, the writer talked with Corky Burger, a rock promoter and president of Rollermania, Inc., in Buffalo, NY, which has joined with the...

Shelf Life Comment by Alice Quinn. The shelf life of a book at the Gotham Book Mart, the most celebrated bookshop in New York, appears to be however long it takes for the person who is next destined to read the book to arrive at the shop & discover that it's there. That books have destinies...

The Talk of the Town Fractography by Adam Gopnik. About 8 hours after the big water-main break last week--not Friday's break, on the West Side, but Monday's, on Madison Avenue, which flooded a ritzier class of basement--George Andersen, of the NYC Bureau of Water Supply, was the only man on the scene who was smiling, because...

The Theatre DON BERNARDO IN HELL by Mimi Kramer.

Fiction A Lot in Common by Veronica Geng. Writer tells when she was born on Jan. 10, 1941, at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. Her mother wrote on her birth certificate her name, Annabelle. Her mother was from Philly, but came down South with her father when the Army assigned him to Fort McPherson, and she must have gotten...

Poetry Everything Starts with a Letter Two Poems by Jean Valentine. Everything starts with a letter...