Letter from Washington by Richard H. Rovere. Jimmy Carter has repeatedly spoken of tax reform as if it were a means of redistributing the wealth and of financing the social programs he has called for. He surely knows...that even the most confiscatory of taxes would not yield revenues that would improve the condition of the poor...

The Talk of the Town Charlie's Boys by E. J. Kahn. Talk story about the classes that Nina Krasavina and her husband Gregory Fedin are holding in teeterboard for black boys from the Bronx. Until the couple left Russia 2 1/2 years ago to seek freedom, they had been with the Moscow State Circus for 20 years. They still perform their...

The Current Cinema THE HUNDRED-PER-CENT SOLUTION by Pauline Kael.

Letter from Stockholm by Steven Kelman. After the recent election Thorbjorn Falldin, the leader of the Center Party, became Sweden's Prime Minister, replacing Olof Palme, of the Social Democratic Party, who had been Prime Minister since Oct., 1969. Sweden's largest party is still the Social Democrats Writer tries to analyze why the Social Democrats lost. There...

Fiction The World in a Room by Henry Bromell. Incidents from the life of a family related alternately by the father, Sam, who recalls his wife Laura, and the son, Scobie, who thinks of his father. At the end Scobie goes to his grandparent's house and senses how his father had one day dreamed of having a wife and...

The Race Track Great Contractor Does a Job by G. F. T. Ryall. Great Contractor won the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park last Saturday. He is owned by Howard Wilson, the head of a road-buidling company...

Fiction A Fact Sheet On The Coming Crunch by Gerald Jonas. Has the crunch finally come...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. The new system of selecting Presidential candidates, whereby the rank & file make their wishes known in primaries & state caucuses & choose candidates directly, has this year led to an ironic result. The public has less enthusiasm for the men who have been chosen. Today the new middlemen are...

Books The Hemingways by V. S. Pritchett.

Musical Events Sounds That Give Delight by Andrew Porter.

Onward and Upward with the Arts DIN-DIN by Thomas Whiteside. ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS about pet-food marketing. Fifteen years ago the pet-food industry was modest. Today, Americans spend 2 1/2 billion dollars annually on pet-food. Writer examines pet-food advertising. In 1974, Ralston Purina Company spent 52 million dollars on advertising. In 1964, Liggett &...

The Talk of the Town Calder Revisited by Geoffrey T. Hellman. Talk story about a reunion with Alexander (Sandy) Calder a while before the recent openings of exhibits of his works, on successive days, at the Perls Galleries and the Whitney Museum. At the Whitney Museum is a 50-year retrospective of over 200 examples of all kinds of objects, created...

The Talk of the Town The Skunk in the Trunk by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about a skunk found in the trunk of Herman and Nina Schneider's car when they returned to their home, at 21 West 11th St., in Greenwich Village. Neither the police, nor the A.S.P.C.A., nor the Bronx Zoo, nor veterinarians could help the Schneiders in removing the skunk from...

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

The Theatre GOING MAD by Brendan Gill.

The Talk of the Town Apples by Gerald Jonas. Talk story about picking apples in the orchards of Hotaling's Farm Market, on Route 9-H, just north of Claverack, New York. Writer tells how he and his wife & children picked apples. This year the prevailing price is $4.50 a bushel, up 50 cents from last year...

Poetry Writing Your Love Down by Laura Jensen. Blur and rot glare down from a heaven, from...

Poetry Assembly by W. S. Merwin. Nomads gather in autumn...

Poetry Wolf's Point, 1831 by Norman Dubie. It's dark but, far away on the horizon...