The Talk of the Town The Truth About Chow Mein by Victor Chen. Talk story about Chinese food. Information came from Milton Liu, a young Chinese friend, interviewed in the Peking restaurant on Broadway at 94th St. Chow mein is a bastardized form of an authentic dish called, in Mandarin, "ch'ao mien", or "stir-fried noodles". The authentic dish is prepared by frying...

The Talk of the Town Trees by Lillian Ross. Talk story about the planting of an Englishoak tree in Central Park to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmstead, the pioneer landscape architect who, with Calvert Vaux, designed Central Park in the eighteen-fifties. A large celebration in honor of his birth was being planned...

Fiction Running Nicely by Morris Lurie. Nightly at ten, the Birnstein boys ran together along the quiet streets of suburban Melbourne, a mile & a quarter under the summer trees. Moses was 22 & Ben was 12. They were orphans. Moses took good care of Ben. At first they ran at almost the same speed, but...

Profiles PROFILES WORK, FOR THE NIGHT IS COMING by L. E. Sissman. PROFILE of Dick Cavett, host of ABC's late night talk program, the "Dick Cavett Show." Cavett is 35. The show has been running 2 1/2 yrs. and is seen in 147 cities. Marshall Brickman, Cavett's idea man or Creative Consultant, says that Cavett's particular style lies in his disengagement-his...

The Current Cinema by Penelope Gilliatt. Review of the film "Fritz the Cat", taken from Robert Crumb's comics and directed by Ralph Bakshi...

The Race Track THE RACE TRACK. by G. F. T. Ryall. Four years ago this week, Peter Fuller's Dancer's Image finished first in the Deeby. Days later, there was an official report to the Kentucky State Racing Commission that a chemical analysis showed he'd had traces of Butazolidin, a prohibited medication, in his system when he ran. The Racing Commission awarded...

Musical Events by Winthrop Sargeant.

The Theatre "The Crucible", by Brendan Gill.

Books by Dwight MacDonald.

A Reporter in China THE RIGHT ROAD AND THE WRONG ROAD by Joseph Kraft. A REPORTER IN CHINA. Measured against the past China these days is a riot of food and there are a few restaurants that offer elegant meals. Once the Communists came to power in 1949 they mobilized millions of soldiers & peasants to work on irrigation & flood-control projects. The...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. Time is running out in Indo-China, & events there may be rapidly approaching their conclusion. But in the U.S. we are transfixed. The responses to the present crisis have been merely repetitious... Pres. Nixon's recent speech on the war was out of the nineteen-fifties "We will not be...

Fiction Escape From Civilization by Isaac Bashevis Singer. A Yiddish writer from Warsaw had begun to plan his escape from civilization for a long time, but the idea only took on substance after he arrived in NY. He started to suffer from allergy, & the doctor told him to move near the ocean, perhaps to Sea Gate. He...

Poetry The Bottle by Al Levine. I have in my hand here a brown bottle...

Poetry The Spring Festival on the River by John Peck. Crowd fear: blown paper and uprooted ferns...

Poetry The Look Back by Arthur Gregory. From you...