Fiction Peas in a Pod by Lisa Walker. Story in eight short sections. Each section begins with a quote about some famous person or people, such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Albert Einstein, George Jones, or Marilyn Monroe. Then there is a paragraph about an ordinary person or people who see great similarities between themselves and the celebrity. These people...

The Current Cinema ALL SIZES by Terrence Rafferty.

The Talk of the Town Apartments by Lisa Walker. Talk story about the incredibly small size of the writer's apartment, and about some of the other people in her building. She says that a "woman in size-7 shoes can cross my apartment in eight and half steps and walk the length of it in eighteen." The building used...

Our Footloose Correspondents NO. 65440752 GOES TO TOWN by E. J. Kahn. OUR FOOTLOOSE CORRESPONDENTS about the biennial convention of the American Association of Retired Persons (of which writer is a member) in Detroit, Michigan...

The Talk of the Town "Ben-Hur" by Adam Gopnik. A talk story about taking Irene Mayer Selznick, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer and the first wife of David O. Selznick, to see "Ben-Hur". Brownlow and David Gill, two British film historians, were presenting a newly restored version of this 1925 movie at the PepsiCo Summerfare in Purchase...

A Reporter at Large THE LONG RIVER by Robert Shaplen. REPORTER AT LARGE about a month-long visit last fall to China by the writer & his Chinese-born wife, Jayjia. They explored the remarkable Long River (its customary Western name, Yangzi, properly denotes only the lower & middle portions). They went by boat through the spectacular Three Gorges between...

Memory Chamber Music by Naomi Bliven. Story about a 21-year-old woman in New York City in 1947. The story is told as a memory of this period. She works at a small magazine which had recently been organized by the Newspaper Guild. She agreed to march in one of their demonstrations. She plays piano...

Comment by Lincoln Caplan. The report of the independent counsel James C. McKay, who was asked to investigate the activities of Attorney General Edwin Meese, documents examples of old-fashioned corruption -misuse of influence and office. Although the facts set out have drawn a lot of attention & are no longer much in dispute...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Theatre THE BELOVED COUNTRY by Mimi Kramer.

Books by Edward Hirsch.

Poetry Since You Didn't Phone by August Kleinzhahler. What I had wanted was to be chaste...

Poetry Mrs. Luna by Nicholas Christopher. Think of an address you've known...

Poetry Reading an Old Poem of Mine by Mary Kinzie. How much of what I did then was unhealthy...