The Theatre by Edith Oliver.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Wonderful by Mark Singer. Talk story about annual party held at Christmastime by two New Yorkers to coincide with the television screening of "It's a Wonderful Life", a 1946 movie. Christopher Little and David White (whose East Side apartment was used this year for the party) began and carry on the tradition. The eighth...

Fiction By The Sea by Alice Adams. Dylan and her mother moved to the northern Calif. coast at the beginning of the summer, mainly to escape bills. Dylan, 18, pretty and despondent, works as a waitress at a local resort lodge. Her mother, self-named Flower, hand-crafts jewelry by profession and has an unreliable boyfriend. Dylan...

The Talk of the Town At the Garden by Joan Bennet. Talk story about writer going with music-loving friends Angie and Louise to see singer Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden the other night Angie is 26 and an art director; Louise is 32 and works in a museum. Writer took notes on what they said and quotes their conversation...

U. S. Journal WARM BODIES by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL about Morgan City, Louisiana, mainland headquarters for the offshore-oil industry. Formerly a shrimp town, Morgan City has grown in wealth and population since drilling began in the Gulf of Mexico in 1947. The oil industry has also attracted roustabouts, men just passing through who are hired for...

Comment by Ian Frazier. On a recent night a WALK sign lay on the sidewalk on Vesey Street near the World Trade Center. The post it was attached to had probably been knocked over by a truck backing up. The cable running through the post was intact, and the WALK sign was still flashing...

Fiction The Cartoonist by Lou Myers. A cartoonist, living in Paris at the home of a French family, describes the events of one particular evening in which he attempts to leave the house for a Pernod. Described in linear fashion, the events are, in the telling, similar in effect to a sequential cartoon. Celeste, the eldest...

The Talk of the Town Homecoming by Rogers E. M. Whitaker. Talk story about E.M. Frimbo's appearance in Paterson, N.J., to help welcome home a locomotive built in Paterson's Cooke works in 1910, now in retirement in the erecting shop of the Rogers works on the Passaic River Frimbo was invited to the parade and reception as an offshoot of the...

A Reporter at Large CONSTITUENCIES by Elizabeth Drew. A REPORTER AT LARGE about the Democratic midterm Party Conference in Memphis, in December, the second midterm conference it has had. Discusses the reasons for such a meeting-to establish a Party agenda, accountability by the Administration to the Party-and how interest groups and the independence of politicians have...

Poetry Transit by Richard Wilbur. A woman I have never seen before...

Poetry Veterans by Steven Meeker. Often they fished till dark...

Poetry All Night by Robert Mazzocco. All night...