Dancing Back Home Again in Emerald City by Arlene Croce.

Books A Candidate for the Future by Howard Moss.

Jazz JAZZ LE GRAND BECHET by Whitney Balliett. Entire column on the life of Sidney Bechet, 1897-1959. He was a clarinettist and the first jazz soprano saxophonist. He was largely disregarded in this country but was very successful in France, where he lived for a long time...

The Talk of the Town A Trip to England by Israel Shenker. Talk story about a school trip to Hadrian's Wall in England, from a village school in Scotland. Writer lives in the village of Brig o'Turk, and when Jean Black, the village school teacher, said that adults could go on the school trip, he and his wife signed up. The single...

Fiction Coach by Mary A. Robison. Football coach Noonan has just been appointed freshman coach at a college in a small Ohio town. It is August and the season will begin soon. The coach, uncertain of the professional status of his new position, is worried about his future. His wife, Sherry, takes an apartment on her...

Comment by William Edgett Smith. Recently, Chester Crocker, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, gave a speech at an American Legion convention in Honolulu. That speech offers the best indication of the Reagan AdministrationOs attitude toward Africa that we've had since last March, when the President described the Republic of South Africa as...

The Talk of the Town Meeting by Jamaica Kincaid. Talk story about a meeting at the new Vista International New York Hotel, at the World Trade Center. It is the newest U.S. hotel in the chain of Hilton International Hotels. 280 people were present, most of them managers of Hilton hotels and their wives. Also on hand was Catherine...

The Talk of the Town "Walt Whitman--A Life" by Justin Kaplan.

The Talk of the Town Bicyclist by Mark Singer. Talk story about a young man seen riding a bicycle with no seat up Sixth Avenue. He tells writer that his Panasonic bicycle seat was stolen. A replacement seat was left lying nearby, but it was a Fuji seat and would not fit the Panasonic frame. Mentions "Glenn's Complete Bicycle...

Fiction More Life by Mark Strand. Writer recalls a summer visit to a friend's house in Maine, several years before. The trip brings back memories of his father, a writer, who had moved his family from NYC to Maine, because he was having trouble starting a third novel and blamed the city. His father, a bit...

A Reporter at Large BOYLE HEIGHTS AND BEYOND by Richard Reeves. REPORTER AT LARGE about the Mexican-American community in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles. Los Angeles has more inhabitants of Mexican descent than any other city except Mexico City itself. In Los Angeles the Community Committee or the Committee of 25, a power bloc, sets the agenda for the...

The Sporting Scene Horse Fair by Bill Barich. THE SPORTING SCENE about the Fasig-Tipton Company's sixty-first annual Saratoga Yearling Sales, conducted during the New York Racing Association's summer meeting at Saratoga Springs. Fasig-Tipton is to horses what Sotheby Parke Bernet is to antiques. Even John M.S. Finney, the president of Fasig-Tipton, didn't anticipate the...

Profiles GARDENS by Julie Hayden. PROFILE of the gardens at St. Luke in the Fields Episcopal Church, in Greenwich Village. Both the Corner Garden and its elder sibling, the Rectory Garden, are maintained by Barbara Ellen Leighton, a longtime Village resident. Born in 1907, Miss Leighton resurrected the Rectory Garden in 1954 and started the...

Poetry Penumbrae by John Updike. The shadows have their seasons, too...

Poetry A Formal Occasion by Tom Sleigh. The tidal flats stretched far and awkward...