Fiction by Donald Barthelme. Bishop lives alone in New York He will be 49 in July. He is divorced, and sends alimony payments each month to his second wife, in London. Bishop likes to drink; today he had a Pilsner Urquell beer for breakfast because he doesn't drink martinis before twelve, and the Scotch...

A Reporter at Large RIDING THE BOOM EXTENSION by John McPhee. REPORTER AT LARGE about telephones in Circle City, Alaska, population 80. Richard Hutchinson brought telephones to Circle City in 1977. He has been in Alaska for sixteen years. In 1973, he brought light and power to Circle City. Before then, residents used kerosene lanterns. Now everyone in town except for...

The Current Cinema MASTER SPY, MASTER SEDUCER by Pauline Kael.

Concert Records / Popular Music History by Winthrop Sargeant.

Books Miracles by Bruno Bettelheim.

The Talk of the Town At the Brass Moon Cafe by Ian Frazier. Talk story in which Michael Cummins, at the opening party for a bar-restaurant on Duane Street called the Brass Moon Cafe (of which he is proprietor and principal builder), alternately answers questions about its design (who did all the woodwork, where did the tin ceiling come from, etc.), and...

Annals of Medicine A RAINY DAY ON THE VINEYARD by Berton Roueche. ANNALS OF MEDICINE about tularemia. Seven persons, who had been at a house party on Martha's Vineyard, were afflicted with a mysterious illness which resembled pneumonia. One of the guests had returned home to Colorado. His doctor there called the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta on Aug. 16, 1978...

The Current Cinema Master Spy, Master Seducer by Pauline Kael. Review of "Dressed to Kill," a suspense comedy about sex and fear set in Manhattan. Directed by Brian De Palma, who also wrote the script, with Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine...

Fiction Smitten by Ivy Strick. When she was fifteen, Trilby Kahn, the narrator, spent the summer with her family at a villa in Spain. She, her fourteen-year old brother, Justin, and her parents, Walter and Sylvia, shared the house with Gordon and Tasha Tenbrook, a young, childless couple. Trilby's family didn't know the Tenbrooks...

The Talk of the Town Out and Back by Mark Singer. Talk story about a weekly community paper called the "Heights-Inwood," "read mainly by those Manhattan residents who live closest to the Arctic Circle" -- that is, north of the George Washington Bridge. An interview with Marie Hinson, the 91-year-old sister-in-law of Harry Houdini, appeared in a...

The Talk of the Town Copies by Anthony Bailey. Talk story in the form of a report from France about Pati Hill (an American ex-model living in Paris) and her use of the photocopying machine as an artistic medium. Writer describes Ms. Hill's discovery of and subsequent experimentation with the copier, its versatility and extraordinary effects, and her...

Dancing Summer Madness by Arlene Croce.

Comment by Alec Wilkinson. By showing how much they can actually hold and still allow room, the full summer streets seem much larger than the bare winter ones. Weather permitting, the people of the East Village and the neighborhoods around it like to come out on the street and lounge and bicker in the...

The Talk of the Town Audition by Jamaica Kincaid. Talk story about a four-hour open audition held by Lester Lanin--society bandleader from Philadelphia--in a rented room on Broadway. He asked the 63 musicians who showed up to play, in various group combinations) approximately fourteen songs from memory...

Musical Events Flute by Andrew Porter.

Poetry Mud Holes by Dave Smith. Only in the heart-given lowering...

Poetry For Margaret by Stanley Moss. My mother near her death...