Comment by Michael J. Arlen. The Pres. wrote a birthday letter for Black Jack, the horse that walked behind the coffin at Pres. Kennedy's funeral. An equally docile creature, trying to serve our nation is something called Public Broadcasting. Quotes from a statement to the press by the head of the White House Office of...

On and Off the Avenue Feminine Fashions by Kennedy Fraser.

Onward and Upward with the Arts MAYBE A QUANTUM LEAP by Calvin Tomkins. ONWARD & UPWARD WITH THE ARTS about earth art. Enough artists have loosed their creative energies upon the landscape to give earth art (or earthworks or land art, as it is sometimes called) the status of an international movement. Writer concentrates on 4 artists --Michael Heizer, who works mainly in...

Dance Dance Gala by Jane Boutwell. Talk story about a fund-raising gala for the NY Public Library's Dance Collection. A few days before the gala, writer visited the Dance Collection, which is in the Lincoln Center's Library. The guide showed him some of the rare items in the Collection, such as some boxes of manuscripts...

Fiction Semi-Private by Helen Yglesias. Story about a 28-year-old woman who wakes up in the hospital after undergoing surgery & having a breast removed. She is still groggy, but remembers something being shouted at her in the recovery room: precancerous tissue. She catches glimpses of the other women in her room & the...

Musical Events by Winthrop Sargeant.

U. S. Journal U.S. JOURNAL: MAINE RUNES by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL about finding stones in Maine with runic inscriptions on them, which might indicate that Vinland was in Me. Before Columbus, Norse explorers visited a place they called Vinland, thought to be in N. America. Last June in Bath, Me. Walter Elliott brought 2 stones he found on the...

Fiction A Fable of the Buyers by W. S. Merwin. A man walked down the street with three dreams for sale. He told no one what they were. They were all printed on paper which would dissolve as it was read or if anyone tried to keep it as a talisman. Although each person had bought one of the three...

The Theatre ALL THUMBS by Brendan Gill.

Books by Nat Hentoff.

Television Comment by Jonathan Schell. Last week the Pres. once again summoned the nation around its television sets to receive a surprise message. The secrets he revealed showed he was right and his opponents wrong. They concerned secret negotiations for peace with the N. Vietnamese. He said: "We are being asked publicly to set a...

Comment by Hendrik Hertzberg. Comment about how a rock music concert, The Concert for Bangladesh, & the record album of the concert may have done more than anything else to mend US-India relations. The concert raised a quarter of a million dollars for the UNICEF fund for Bengali relief; the newly-released record...

The Race Track by G. F. T. Ryall. At the Winner's Circle Dinner, honoring horses and horsemen of 1971, Paul's Mellon's Run the Gantlet was voted the best on turf courses. He was also voted the leading breeder and owner...

Letter from Washington by Richard H. Rovere. Tells about the coming Presidential campaign & the contest for the Democratic nomination. Points out Pres. Nixon's improved standing. If the Democrats can't agree on a ticket acceptable to all major factions, & if George Wallace repeats his 1968 performance, as he appears likely to do, Nixon seems bound to...

The Talk of the Town Books, Ideas, and Talk by Geoffrey T. Hellman. Talk story about John William Ward, the new president of Amherst College. He left Harvard in 1942, served as a Marine, & returned in 1946 to study American history and literature. He said that F.O. Matthiessen and Perry Miller, on the faculty, influenced him toward books, ideas, and talk...

Fiction IV-Dip in Hot Water and Fry Till Acerbic by S. J. Perelman. Writer tells about his steaming t rip down the Persian Gulf on the S.S. Choleria, dreaming about the delicatessen food of Manhattan, for which the ship's food is a poor substitute. He tells captain of the ship that his nubile companion, Sally Lou Claypool, is really 86 yrs. old &...

The Current Cinema by Pauline Kael. Review of Roman Polanski's "Macbeth". Slaughter is the star. Polanski converts what in Shakespeare was pathology into the normal state of affairs. Mentions Polanski's connection with the Manson murders...

The Art World (The Art Galleries) by Harold Rosenberg.

Poetry February by John Lloyd Owen. When the signal dullness...

Poetry Identity by Paul Petrie. They are always saying, the others, "Be what you are...

Poetry Nights of Sirius by Douglas Dunn. Unknown men tonight will put...