Comment by Daniel Menaker. Writer tells about six rides he got hitchhiking last week before the transit strike ended (which was on Friday evening, Apr. 11). The first ride was with a couple in their fifties: the woman worked for the new American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum. The second ride was with a...

Dancing Murder, He Said, Said He by Arlene Croce.

U. S. Journal JUDGING JOHNNY JONES by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL: MIAMI, FLA., about a case of alleged misappropriation of funds by the superintendent of schools and a school principal in Miami, Fla. In what is being called the "gold-plumbing caper," Johnny Jones and Solomon Barnes both of whom are black, have been accused of second-degree grand...

Books by John Updike.

The Talk of the Town 1040 by Mark Singer. Talk story about Alan Siegel, president of Siegel and Gale, Inc., which has redesigned and redrafted the 1040 -- the federal-income-tax-return form. Siegel and Gale are specialists in the areas of "design communication" and "language simplification." They were joined in this effort by the accounting firm of Deloitte...

Fiction What Makes Them Tick by Veronica Geng. A quote from Senator Howard Baker states that one of three aspects of the Presidential campaign is "what makes the candidates tick." The writer answers this with descriptions of six of the candidates...

The Talk of the Town Actions by Mark Singer. Talk story about lawsuits following the recent transit strike. Stuart Summit, partner and head of litigation in the above firm, filed a class-action suit on behalf of all businesses and profit-making institutions in the city which suffered because of the strike. The suit was filed against the Transport...

Profiles THE RIGHT PEOPLE: THE YOUNG by Mollie Panter-Downes. PROFILE of Sir Robert Mayer, a naturalized Englishman, past 100 years of age, who has worked, and is still working to bring music to young people. He was born in Mannheim, Germany, and came to work in London when he was 17, in 1896. Tells about the glittering concert and...

The Theatre THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Brendan Gill.

The Talk of the Town Rooftops by James Stevenson. Talk story about the rooftops seen by the writer from the window of his 19th floor office. This story is accompanied by illustrations. First he tells about the old brown wooden water tanks. Then he tells about pipes and chimneys and skylights...

The Air (On Television) Fred Wiseman's "Kino Pravda" by Michael J. Arlen.

The Current Cinema THE EYE OF THE BASILISK by Brendan Gill.

Fiction Still Other Investments by George Booth. Six captioned drawings. Some of the captions are: "Fruits and nuts can be dried at home in your spare time". "Dirt-pushing machines. Americans need to oust dirt." "Bedsprings. Double your worth...

Fiction The Dock by David Cashman. In 1965, Thomas Farrell, an architect, moves his family to a lakeside cottage and begins constructing a wooden dock. Each of his sons -- Paul, John and Michael (twins) and Matt -- helps him in turn. Farrell and his wife, Margaret, had hoped that their last child would be a girl; in...

The Talk of the Town Banquet by Wallace White. Talk story about the Explorers Club, which was first written about in The New Yorker in April, 1929. The club now occupies a house on East Seventieth Street and has about twenty-nine hundred members. The writer dropped in on the seventy-fifth anniversary banquet the other day, which was...

Musical Events Passions by Nicholas Kenyon.

Fiction The Night Mummy Got the Wrong Mink Coat by John Cheever. The year that everybody went to China if they hadn't already been there, that women wore ankle-length mink coats and men wore massive gold wristwatches with golden bands, Ellie and Howie (who call each other Mummy and Daddy), went to the O'Malley's thirtieth-wedding-anniversary party at the Country...

Poetry James by W. S. Merwin. News comes that a friend far away...

Poetry Panthers at the Sherry Netherland Hotel by Robert Watson. They leap from the ledge thirty floors up...