Fiction Advice by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The narrator recalls the years when he was giving advice in a column for a Yiddish newspaper in New York. A poet named Morris Pintchover once came to him for advice. Pintchover's wife, Tamara, had left him and gone to live with Mark Lenchner, a well-known writer and Communist...

The Theatre OOMPAH, OOMPAH! by Brendan Gill.

Dancing Ballet Fantasque by Arlene Croce.

Fiction Learn a Trade by John Updike. Fegley is a successful artist, an internationally known junk sculptor. He was born and raised in Missouri, and his father disapproved of "all this artsy-craftsy stuff." In spite of the fact that Fegley is successful, he finds as he grows older that he agrees with his father. He tried...

Comment by Henry S. F. Cooper. On the heels of the success of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew by Saturn last August, the Office of Management & Budget in Washington, D.C., as part of the AdministrationOs plans to cut government spending, has proposed cutting funds of NASA so that the money available would be...

Concert Records / Popular Music Best Yet by Douglas Watt.

The Talk of the Town Mailbag by Garrison Keillor. Talk story about the writer's interest in a small town in Minnesota. He used to visit the town every week to see a tall, black-haired woman whom he hoped would marry him. They took long walks from the college she attended to a cafe downtown and along the river...

Greetings, Friends! by Roger Angell. Good neighbors, hark! Don't you discern...

The Talk of the Town Porcelli Brothers, Inc. by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about the Porcelli Brothers, who sell quality meat, eggs, and poultry in a store at 262 Elizabeth Street, near Houston. There are four of them involved in the business: Stanley, Louis, and Vincent, who are brothers, and Peter, Stanley's son. Stanley is the oldest. Until last summer the...

Fiction Decade of the Year by Ellis Weiner. Parody of movie advertisement. Now. In time for the eighties: a love story for the eighties starring a hero for the eighties and a sex symbol for the eighties in what just might be the first great American motion picture of the eighties. She's been a ten since her twenties...

Musical Events Away, Above the Chimney Tops by Andrew Porter.

Dance Aerobic by Stanley Mieses. Talk story about a four-hour aerobic-dance marathon, held as a benefit for the Special Olympics, on the dance floor of Bond's International Casino, a spacious discotheque just off Times Square. 700 women and three men took part. The marathoners were also active participants in classes run by Aerobic...

A Reporter at Large TRANS EUROP UNIT by Berton Roueche. REPORTER AT LARGE about going from Copenhagen to Paris by train. Writer booked a sleeping compartment on the Danish express to Paris that leaves Copenhagen every afternoon at 4:45. At the station he saw that the first cars were coaches, the next were couchettes, then marked in white "TEN: Trans...

Books Getting On by Whitney Balliett.

Our Far-Flung Correspondents THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM by Emily Hahn. OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about the First International Conference on the Human/Companion Animal Bond, which the writer attended in Philadelphia. The three-day event, held at the University of Pennsylvania, was devoted to exploring the use of companion animals for therapeutic purposes. The conference was sponsored principally by the...

Poetry The First Winter Light by James Baker Hall. The first winter light...

Poetry Colder by Steven Goldsberry. The farther north I wandered...