Comment by Jonathan Schell. Amid the usual shopping and celebrating, this holiday season brings us pictures of people who are dying, or have died of starvation in Ethiopia. Approximately six million people are in mortal need of food. (The figure six million, the estimated number of Jews killed by the Nazis, reverberates in memory...

Books by Helen Vendler.

Fiction The Slaves in New York by Tama Janowitz. Eleanor's cousin told her brother Roland a joke when he was 5. The joke went, "Fat and Fat Fat and Pinch Me were in a boat. Fat and Fat Fat fell out. Who was left?" When her brother answered, he got pinched. He repeated the joke to his mother, who...

The Diplomatic Round TALKS ABOUT TALKS by John Newhouse. THE DIPLOMATIC ROUND about arms control. The talks in Geneva between Moscow and Washington about limiting strategic and intermediate-range nuclear weapons never went anywhere, and Moscow broke them off at the end of last year, after the U.S. began deploying missiles in Europe capable of striking Russia. Although the...

The Talk of the Town Floats by Wallace White. Talk story about Rose Palace, a warehouse-like structure in Pasadena, which is both the oldest and the largest of the companies that build floats for the annual Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. Writer spoke to Dick Gillespie, the first American to do the hula hoop. "I was with the...

Fiction Fellow-Creatures by Wright Morris. Colonel Huggins, retired from the U.S. Army, was awakened by the mournful clucking of a leghorn pullet, the pet of children who lived in a nearby trailer. He'd grown up in a farmyard with many animals, and carefully picked up the bird. Then he dialed the neighbor's number and heard...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Hole on Forty-Fifth Street by James Stevenson. Talk story about a friend who tells of a hole in the sidewalk on the south side of Forty-Fifth Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, about where the front door of the Seymour Hotel used to be. It is small but menacing--roughly a yard in diameter and, in...

The Theatre by Edith Oliver.

The Sporting Scene ISLAND RITES by Charles McGrath. THE SPORTING SCENE about a high school football game which took place on Nov. 17 on the island of Nantucket, 30 miles south of Cape Cod. The Nantucket High School Whalers, before a crowd of perhaps a thousand, met their hated (and beloved) foes from across the Muskeget Channel--the...

The Talk of the Town Many Little Pieces by William McKibben. Talk story about the Shredex Watergate Top Secret 2001, lately America's best-selling desktop paper shredder. Writer spoke to Michael J. Falco, Jr., the president of Shredex, who said that he named his shredder the Watergate because of "that Watergate situation." Writer asked if Mr. Falco felt as if he...

Reflections TRUFFAUT by Terrence Rafferty. REFLECTIONS about Francois Truffaut, who died last October at the age of 52. He was first a critic and then a filmmaker. As a filmmaker, he was at his best in historical films, like "Jules and Jim," "The Wild Child," and "The Story of Adele H." Tells about his career...

Comment by William McKibben. A group of people were demonstrating against apartheid in front of 425 Park Avenue, the offices of the local South African consulate. They were waiting to be arrested. A few of the tactics and a lot of the tacticians for the current wave of protest dates from the civil-rights...

Profiles CITY VOICES LOLA SZLADITS by Whitney Balliett. PROFILE of Lola Szladits, curator of the Berg Collection housed at the New York Public Library. It is formally known as the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, and it contains roughly 150,000 items. Lists some of these items. The Berg Collection was begun...

Poetry Sextet by Joseph Brodsky. An eyelid is twitching. From the open mouth/gushes silence...

Poetry Ode to Evaporation by John Updike. What lifts the ocean into clouds/and dries our ink upon the page?/... Evaporation...