The Talk of the Town Creativity by William McKibben. Talk story about jewelry made from plastic models of sushi. Isao Kato, the proprietor of the Yamashiro Japanese restaurant on Fifth Avenue and Thirty-first Street, noticed that many more men came in for lunch than women. To solve this problem, and attract more women, he made jewelry from the...

Jazz by Whitney Balliett.

Books by John Updike.

Fiction The Kingfisher by Leslie Norris. In England, on the morning of his fouteenth birthday, James met his father in the kitchen. "So you're fourteen," James'father said. "James, when the men of our family reach the age of fourteen, they are thought old enough to bear a terrible knowledge." Oh, God, thought James, we suffer from...

The Talk of the Town Gramercy Park by Suzannah Lessard. Talk story about a lecture at the National Arts Club given by Dr. Eugene Weise, an ophthalmologist who is also an amateur historian and whose specialty is Gramercy Park in the 19th century. The writer walked around the park and then entered the Club's Grand Gallery. Dr. Weise was dressed...

Fiction To Calabria by Wright Morris. In the early years of their friendship, in the nineteen-thirties, Hal and Morgan did some cycling in Italy. Several years older, Hal initially seemed to Morgan an ideal travel companion. They'd met at the Berlitz school in Paris, where Hal tutored in Spanish and Italian. He was the smartest...

Comment by William McKibben. A political-minded friend writes that he visited Philadelphia last weekend. He toured Independence Hall, where the Declaration was debated. That politicians could approve the Declaration in less than a week and return to the same room a decade later to spend a summer on the Constitution seems a marvel...

A Reporter at Large HEIRS OF GENERAL PRACTICE by John McPhee. REPORTER AT LARGE about general medical practice, especially in Maine, a state with no medical school and a scarcity of rural doctors. The age of medical technology began to pick up momentum around the First World War, and with it came the age of specialization and a decline in General...

The Current Cinema ETHNICS by Pauline Kael.

Fiction Weather by William Steig. Nine drawings with captions such as: Sleet, Drizzle, First Snowfall, Sun Shower, etc. All depict people going along in various kinds of weather...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Poetry On The Soul by Carl Dennis. They told you you owned it and you believed them...

Poetry Speech From a Novella by Dana Gioia. Every night I wake and find myself...