Books Through a Continent, Darkly by John Updike.

The Talk of the Town Ladders by Philip Hamburger. Talk story about Max Ernst, the Surrealist master, who is having a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. More than 300 of his paintings, sculptures, illustrated books, collages and frottages are on exhibit. Writer ate lunch with Ernst at the Plaza, along with Ernst's wife (the American surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning...

Around City Hall Comparisons by Andy Logan. Discussion of how the "Times" & the "News" have been covering the Beame administration. During Beame's first year the press gave him the best of things. The view of him as an earnest, low-key figure, a Foxy Grandpa forever putting things over on more pretentious types while effectively running...

Fiction Cross Currents by Charles McGrath. A parody of the Con Edison Customer Newsletter which is included in the envelop with your bill. The newsletter begins by announcing that electricity is still a bargain-and it would be more of a bargain if the so called environmentalists didn't care more for grebes than for a decent...

The Art World Death and the Artist by Harold Rosenberg. Lengthy review of the "Matter of Mark Rothko", a case in Manhattan's Surrogate Court. The case is a contest for money & property, but the issue of the artist's survival after death is woven through every aspect of it. Tells about the artist's will, what happened after his death...

The Theatre THE PERILS OF CLEVERNESS by Brendan Gill.

Musical Events Minneapolis by Andrew Porter.

The Air (On Television) WALTZ-TIME AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST by Michael J. Arlen.

The Talk of the Town Unbound by Hendrik Hertzberg. Talk story about Barbra Streisand, who is currently starring in the film "Funny Lady." Writer attended a press lunch at the Pierre, just 3 days after the live TV concert shot in Washington D.C. featuring Streisand & her co-star James Caan singing songs from the film. At the press...

The Race Track Luck Never Stays Long by G. F. T. Ryall. Jack Dreyfus, Jr., has been proposed for the chairmanship of the New York Racing Association by the nominating committee of its board of trustees, and will be elected at the annual meeting, on May 14th. He will take over from Alfred Vanderbilt, who told the directors recently that he would...

Fiction Travel by Laurie Colwin. Marguerite, a marine biologist tells about her husband how they met, the period until they married and the quality of their relationship. He is a concert pianist with a passion for flying which developed while stationed in Vietnam. He likes to fly on oddball spur lines to remote landing strips...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. Several years ago, around the time of the first Earth Day, when public concern over the state of the natural environment was becoming a political issue on a national scale, one of the TV news programs began a series of reports entitled "Can This World Be Saved?"... Before long, the...

The Talk of the Town Meeting by Geoffrey T. Hellman. Talk story about members' meeting of N.Y. Zoological Society, at Avery Fisher Hall. Some importations from the Bronx Park were on display: a screech owl, a gray goose, a rooster, a European ferret, a California king snake, an African monitor lizard. The woman demonstrator with the animals said she was...

The Talk of the Town Home on the Range by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about Lewis Kerner who is building a modular mobile-home club in Palm Springs, Calif. called The Colony Club...

Profiles THE DECOY FANATIC by Penelope Gilliatt. PROFILE of Henri Langlois, 61, film historian & collector, & founder of the great Cinematheque Francaise, through which he is the father of the middle generation of directors, & grandfather of New Wave filmmakers like Truffaut, Godard, & Chabrol. He stores & restores all the film he can find. In...

The Current Cinema The Rear Guard by Pauline Kael. Review of his film "The Great Waldo Pepper...

Poetry Adamantine by Peter Viereck. Animal, veg, or mineral" was always the game-- And coal's red roar...

Poetry The End of March, Duxbury by Elizabeth Bishop. It was cold and windy, scarcely the day...