The Talk of the Town Doo-Wop by Daniel Menaker. Talk story about a recent concert of doo-wop music at Symphony Space, including an interview with Earl Carroll, lead singer of the Cadillacs, one of the groups which performed. The audience, comprised of "both middle-aged nostalgics and new devotees" of the genre of rock-and-roll quartet and...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Harold Brodkey. A friend writes: The night before the first of 2 recent snowstorms, I looked out of an acquaintance's office window at the winter twilight around the grandly-lit RCA Building & I saw what looked like the intrusion of black into the deep-blue cup of the sky, suggesting some...

The Sporting Scene THE CUP COMES BACK by Tony Gibbs. THE SPORTING SCENE about the America's Cup competition & the victory of Stars & Stripes over Kookaburra III & about the Royal Perth Yacht club's base there, as well as about the high-tech yachting facilities which were transported to the site...

The Theatre MERRY CHAOS by Edith Oliver.

Letter from the Elysian Fields by Jane Kramer. The town of Campos Eliseos is the poorest town in the poorest parish in the poorest dioces in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Frei David Raimundo Santos shares parish duties there with two other Franciscan priests. He is a priest of the "liberation church"-the People's Church. He &...

Fiction Hands Up by Veronica Geng. Writer gives instructions, expressed in the form of officially worded rules, regulations, "warnings and strictures", on the placing of one's hands over one's face. The instructions are prefaced by a quote from "The New Republic", describing how Pres. Reagan responded to the news that a farmer had received 12 million...

Fiction Frau Messinger by William Trevor. Harry, the narrator, recalls when he was 15, growing up in Ireland, and being befriended by an older, married woman. Harry's family was Protestant, of the servant class, and had come up in the world. His father was now the proprietor of the timberyard where he had once been employed...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Books by John Updike.

Comment Comment, Pt. I by Robert Gottlieb. This comment appears in the first issue edited by Robert Gottlieb after the retirement of long-time editor William Shawn.) In these past weeks, scores of news stories, feature articles and editorials about "The New Yorker" have appeared in the press, and, more important, a flood of letters has reached...

The Talk of the Town Pen Pals by Naomi Bliven. Talk story about a stockholder who inherited a miniscule number of shares of common stock in 2 companies, and about the "urgent and artful communications" she receives from each of them. Both companies are described as behaving like flirtatious members of a lonely-hearts club toward stockholders as well as...

Television People Meters by James Lardner. Talk story about a symposium sponsored by the International Radio and Television Society, about a new kind of electronic diary system that automatically monitors a household's television viewing and breaks it down by minutes, channels, and--provided that every family member remembers to punch a button that announces his presence...

Poetry Glass by Vickie Karp. At 8 P.M., each office window...

Poetry In the Country of Dreamers by Lizbeth Rosenberg. If I chose to live over my happy days of youth...