Letter from London by Mollie Panter-Downes. The Royal Academy's much heralded Pompeii exhibition is the big winter art event. The selection of exhumed objects, mostly from the Museo Nazionale in Naples, is the largest ever seen outside Italy. On display are objects of everyday life, portraits of Pompeii's citizens, mummified shapes of dogs and people caught...

The Talk of the Town Frisco by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about Dr. Charles T. Tart, professor of psychology at the Univ. of Calif. at Davis. Tells about his books "Altered States of Consciousness", (1969), "On Being Stoned" (1971) and "States of Consciousness", (1975). His most recent work has been with extrasensory perception, and in "Learning to Use Extrasensory...

A Reporter at Large Microwaves~I by Paul Brodeur. REPORTER AT LARGE about increased use, in both civilian & military fields. of microwaves and their health hazards...

The Talk of the Town Memoir by Anthony Hiss. Talk story in which the old curmudgeon attended an "in memoriam" for jazz guitarist Eddie Condon, held at the jazz club, Eddie Condon's(W.54th St.), by his wife, Phyllis. The walls at Condon's are a photographic panorama of the guitarist's career and imprinted in each tabletop is a facsimile...

The Race Track Long Shot by G. F. T. Ryall. Tells about the Stuyvesant Handicp this year. Old-timers remember that in 1920, when Man o' War won the Stuyvesant by eight lengths at odds of one to a hundred, only one horse, named Knobbie, ran against him. It was said that Chicago O'Brien, a former bricklayer who ran a...

Fiction What My Mother Told Me by Susan Clark. Narrator tells about her mother and grandmother. All her mother's hair fell out when she was born and it grew back in brown wisps. She and her mother went to Minneapolis from St. Louis for her grandmother's funeral and when they arrived home, her mother said she never liked her...

Books Protestants, Patriots, Philosophers by Naomi Bliven.

Fiction Domestic Life In America by John Updike. Fraser is in the process of getting a divorce from his wife, Jean. He is involved with another woman, Greta, who is also recently divorced. Fraser visits his children who live with Jean in a suburb of Boston Gresa lives nearby with her children. Fraser is now renting an apartment...

The Art World (The Art Galleries) Ben Shahn by Harold Rosenberg.

Comment by George W. S. Trow. There are shoeshines that cost more than a pair of shoes; there are pencils that cost more than a typewriter...and now there is a cocktail table that costs more than a mobile home. It costs forty thousand dollars (retail) and is a contrivance of a company called Axius Designs...

The Current Cinema Affirmation by Pauline Kael. Review of "Bound For Glory", based on Woody Guthrie's autobiography. The leading role is played by David Carradine, one of John Carradine's sons...

Musical Events Many-Colored Glass by Andrew Porter.

U. S. Journal THE UNPLEASANTNESS AT WHIMSEY'S by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL: BOSTON about discrimination against blacks at the Boston disco, Whimsey's. Alan Tremain, the president of Hotels of Distinction which manages the disco for the John Hancock Company, turned a huge unsuccessful restaurant, called whimsey's, into a disco. Tells briefly about the current disco craze and about big business's...

Poetry The Midlands by Carl Dennis. In summer, in our town...

Poetry The Ganges by Norman Dubie. I'm sorry but we can't go to the immersions tonight...

Poetry St. Vincent's by W. S. Merwin. Thinking of rain clouds that rose over the city...