Fiction This Space by Mavis Gallant. When you strain the Stalin calories out of a basic stock, do you still have a strong broth? That is the question this space put not long ago. Mrs. J.D. writes that for years her former husband got up in the night to eat Maoist leftovers. "If men loathe the...

Comment by Roger Angell. Quotes from a letter about the baseball strike from a friend. He mourns the absence of baseball, saying, among other things, that baseball flows past us all through the summer-it is one of the things that summer is for...

The Theatre Suds by Edith Oliver.

Comment by Jonathan Schell. At his latest press conference President Reagan remarked, "I'm satisfied that we do have a foreign policy." The question is whether the policy hangs together and makes sense. In an attempt to clarify its foreign policy, the Adm. has offered the public a number of distinctions. The best known is...

That Was New York HARLEM II-SHAPING A BLACK METROPOLIS by Jervis Anderson. THAT WAS NEW YORK about Harlem's development as a black community in the first two decades of this century. The black newspaper the Age called Negro attention to Harlem, lecturing its readers on the advantages of building a fine neighborhood of their own, and it trained a severe eye on...

The Talk of the Town Peter Korn by George W. S. Trow. Talk story about furniture-maker Peter Korn. Korn was born in Philadelphia in 1951 and has been making furniture for seven years. He often uses cherry wood, from the Rosenzweig lumberyards, in the Bronx. He talks about why he likes Rosenzweig's: it is small and they allow him to pick...

Musical Events One Perfect Harmony by Nicholas Kenyon.

Photography Maximilian's Sombrero by Janet Malcolm.

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL IOUs by Andy Logan. Mayor Koch, who has been called a racist demagogue by various local black leaders, showed up at a December party at the Plaza celebrating the 25th anniversary of the "National Review," a conservative magazine that has hailed the election of Ronald Reagan. When he was a Congressman, Koch was considered...

Fiction The Traveller by Katinka Loeser. Elizabeth lives on Long Island Sound with her husband. They moved from New York City when their children were small. She loves the country and the changing seasons. Her son's wife is going to have a baby, and Elizabeth calls the unborn baby "the traveller." Her husband, Gladstone, is in...

Poetry Stars (A Note on Mycology) by Robert Penn Warren. A glade on the bench of the mountain...