The Current Cinema by Pauline Kael.

Comment by William Finnegan. Comment about visiting the UN. Writer finally got around to visiting the UN recently. He compared its architecture to that of his public school. He suggested that the reason many people do not visit from New York is that the place suffers from the taint of the civics lesson. People...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Theatre TWO OF A KIND by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town Snowballs by Patricia Marx. Talk story about Stuart Himmelfarb's snowball collection. Stuart keeps it at his parents' house in the Bronx, rather than at his own house in Hartsdale, because his wife does not share hie enthusiasm for snowballs. The 28 snowballs are stored in a freezer. Tells about the collection which includes snowballs...

A Critic at Large I GOT A SONG by Ethan Mordden. A CRITIC AT LARGE about Judy Garland whose career in films records, concerts, radio & television lasted from 1935 until her death in 1969. Writer says of her that she is comparable to no one, not only the first of her kind but the last She is irritatingly indescribable. She...

Fiction In the Museum of Literature by Benoit van Innis. Four illustrations showing literary artifacts such as the "Madeleines" of Marcel Proust. Also included are items relating to James Joyce, Francois Villon and Dostoyevski...

Anniversary REPORT FROM CHINA by Fred C. Shapiro. Writer timed his recent visit to China to coincide with the anniversary date of the events at Tiananmen Square last year. Although thousands of soldiers had been withdrawn from the city's principal intersections at least during daylight and early-evening hours, Beijing still seemed to be a city under military...

The Talk of the Town Floats by Robert Knafu. Talk story about Mr. Haruki Kadokawa's participation in this year's Columbus Day parade up Fifth Avenue. Mr. Kadokawa is a filmmaker, publisher, poet, Shinto priest, and sailing enthusiast. He plans to sail an exact replica of Columbus's ship, the Santa Maria, from Spain to Japan next year. He brought two...

Fiction S Angel by Michael Chabon. Ira Wiseman, a 4th-year drama student at U.C.L.A., attends the wedding of his cousin Sheila in Los Angeles. Ira never goes anywhere without being certain that when he arrives he will meet the woman with whom he has been destined to fall in love. At the reception, in the...

A Reporter at Large DEVASTATION by George W. S. Trow. Writer gives an account of a train derailment which killed two people in a suburb of San Bernadino, CA, and caused a subsequent rupture of a fuel pipeline which burned down several houses in the partly black area. Writer has a friend who is working on a book of fiction...

Poetry The Simple Truth by Philip Levine. I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes...

Poetry Stripping and Putting On by May Swenson. I always felt like a bird blown through the world...

Poetry Hands by Marianne Burke. Unadorned, they sat in our kitchen...