The Talk of the Town Diplomats by Stanley Mieses. Talk story about the Diplomat Samurai Band, a musical combo made up of 7 Japanese men. Most of them are employed at the office of the Consulate General of Japan on Park Avenue. Writer was invited to a rehearsal by Hiroshi Furusawa, a vice-consul. The band was going to...

Comment by Adam Gopnik. From a writer friend: You could watch the Sugar Ray Leonard /Marvin Hagler fight at about 100 different places around town... Tells about the sort of people at Town Hall, where the writer went & about the inaccurate assumptions they made about the fight. "Now, uh, Sugar Ray is like...

The Talk of the Town Balloons by Suzannah Lessard. Talk story about visiting P.S. 41, an elementary school in Manhattan, that also likes to call itself the Greenwich Village School. The visit was on Mon., Apr. 6, the first day of National Science and Technology Week. Miss Boriotti, the assistant principal, would check to see if it had begun...

Profiles THE HON. MEMBER FOR HOUGHTON by E. J. Kahn. PROFILE of Helen Suzman, 69, who since 1953 has been a member of the all-white House of Assembly, the main lawmaking body of the Republic of South Africa. She has never ceased to be a dogged adversary of her country's ruling clique. She is an anti-apartheid activist. The...

Reflections J'APPELLE UN CHAT UN CHAT by Janet Malcolm. REFLECTIONS about the literary qualities of three of Freud's case histories, of Dora, the Rat Man, and the Wolf Man, and about the evolution of his technique of psychoanalysis as evidenced in them. Dora, the 18-year-old subject of Freud's first major case history (written in 1901 & published...

Fiction Bech in Czech by John Updike. Henry Bech, the semi-obscure American author, now in his early '60's, had been given a suite in the American Ambassador's Residence for the week of his cultural visit to Prague. The Residence had been called the last palace built in Europe; it was built in the late '20...

The Theatre STEEPED IN SHAKESPEARE by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town Zoo Update by Emily Hahn. Talk story about a visit to what once was, and will be again (someday), the Central Park Zoo, and in the Arsenal the writer spoke with Richard Lattis, the director of the City Zoos Project in his office. He explained the purpose of all the construction(it was a day...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Current Cinema by Pauline Kael. THE CURRENT CINEMA review of “Law of Desire,” “Raising Arizona,” and “Street Smart.”...

Poetry April Galleons by John Ashbery. Something was burning. And besides...

Poetry Women in Profile: Bas-Relief, Left Section Missing by Susan Mitchell. Whatever it was they were celebrating...