Comment by Adam Gopnik. Comment about "Time" cover story about rejecting the rat race, called "The Simple Life." "Time" told the case histories of Americans, living in communities from Frazier Park, California, to Burlington, Vermont, who have decided to live the new simpler life. There were photographs of the simplified Americans, and photographs of...

The Talk of the Town Mysteries by David Owen. A talk story about attending a lecture on UFOs given by Philip Imbrogno at the Heart Center for Attitudinal Healing, in Bethel, Connecticut. The Heart Center is a spiritual-counselling facility. It offers programs in astral projection, t'ai chi, miracles, neurolinguistic programming, UFOs, and other subjects, and it has sponsored...

The Talk of the Town Alone by Mindy Aloff. Talk story about visiting Ellis Island alone. Most of the people who went were either couples or small family groups. Writer had to wait 1 1/2 hours for a boat. She describes the scene on line: the various vendors and street performers. Writer made her way through three floors of...

The Talk of the Town Harry Spilman by Alison Rose. Talk story about baseball player Harry Spilman who for six months of the year-the off season-catches when Nolan Ryan pitches. Nolan Ryan is 44 years old and recently pitched his seventh no-hitter. After the game Ryan gave Mr. Spilman public credit for helping him keep in shape...

Fiction Notes from Week One of the Psychiatrists' Strike by James Gorman. Diary kept by a man during a strike by psychiatrists, which coincides with a strike by doormen and elevator operators. The patients themselves fill in for the striking shrinks, taking turns analyzing one another. The diarist is analyzed first by Enid the agoraphobe, then by Jack the depressive doorman. When...

Fiction Art Work by A. S. Byatt. Debbie Dennison lives at 49 Tadema Road, in South London, with her husband, Robin, and their children, Natasha and Jamie. Robin is an artist whose paintings, still lifes of a few fetishistic objects selected for their vivid colors, have had no public success. When they married, Debbie gave up her...

Profiles A TROMBONE MOUTH by Whitney Balliett. PROFILE of jazz trombonists Jimmy Knepper. The tenor saxophonist and pianist Loren Schoenberg played with him on Staten Island, and said of him recently, 'Jimmy is the mst flexible of all the trombonists. He has built his own phraseology out of Charlie Parker's vocabulary. He's not trombonistic, and his style...

Annals of Government SERVING THE PRESIDENT III-THE VIETNAM YEARS by Clark Clifford. ANNALS OF GOVERNMENT about the writer serving as adviser to Pres. Johnson. In early 1968 he became Sec. of Defense. For the last 10 months of the Johnson Adm. the main concern was the Vietnam war. After the President's Mar. 31 speech in which he said he would limit the...

The Theatre ALUMNUS by Edith Oliver.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Current Cinema by Terrence Rafferty.

Books by Louis Menand.

Poetry Anatolian Journey by Richard Tillinghast. Impedimenta of the self...

Poetry Basement Walltz by Dave Smith. Probably the Platters, first music...

Poetry For Cheri by Elizabeth Macklin. Here are all these women getting all unthinking...