A Reporter at Large I-THE CULT OF THE ATOM by Daniel Ford. REPORTER AT LARGE about the inadequacies of nuclear plant safety...

Fiction The Browns by Frederick Barthelme. A humorous story about a couple who move into their first house and attempt to become friends with their neighbors, the Browns. The husband, who is also the narrator, tells us that when the couple moved in they "were in the middle of argument about friends--Allison (his wife...

Reflections II-JOURNAL OF THE LONGEST WAR by Jacobo Timerman. REFLECTIONS about the effects of the devastation in Beirut on the Israelis and the implications it has for the future of Israel. Writer feels there is an emerging sympathy for the Palestinians among many Jews and that this identification must be fostered until the Palestinians have their own homeland. The...

Portrait Comment by Philip Hamburger. We heard from a friend who recently spent a day at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where the huge Thomas Eakins retrospective--"Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia"--is being held. Carol Troyen, curator of the show, invited the writer to come on a day when the museum would...

The Theatre STEPS GOING DOWN by Brendan Gill.

The Talk of the Town Info by Wallace White. Talk story about a visit to the Information Management Exposition and Conference--Info '82--which attracted some 38,000 people to the Coliseum last week. Computer terminals gleamed. Video screens displayed words and pictures in rainbow hues. Richard S. Wolcott, the producer of Info '82, told how the office needs to...

Fiction Indecent Indemnity by Veronica Geng. One of the Most Awful Insurance-Business Scandals in Hollywood History) This is a parody of a recent book called "Indecent Exposure", by David McClintick. It tells that after Columbia Pictures discovered that David Begelman had embezzled $60,000 he was kept on by the board at a handsome annual stipend...

The Talk of the Town Heroes by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about a presentation given by William Whyte at the Japan Society entitled, "Pedestrian Life: Tokyo and New York." Whyte has made three trips to Japan and spent a lot of time in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo (which includes 13 high-rise buildings and the world's largest shopping...

The Talk of the Town Appearance by Kennedy Fraser. Talk story about Calvin Klein's "only East Coast appearance this fall" at Bloomingdale's on Columbus Day. A crowd waited in the Calvin Klein Shop on Three. At last an escalator carried Klein downward from the floor above and into the crowd. With Klein were 3 famous models wearing his couture...

Musical Events Aristocrats by Andrew Porter.

Poetry The Enormous Aquarium by Sherod Santos. All morning long, from inside the lobby...

Poetry On the Language of Dust by Philip Levine. Though the wallflower is fidelity in adversity...