Portrait Portrait of the Admiral by Lou Myers. The narrator is an artist in the U.S. Navy, during World War II. He paints many of his superior officers. After finishing a portrait of Commodore Blakesley he is asked what he wants to do. He replies, "I should like to paint the war, sir," and so is sent into...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. In political theory, a distinction is often drawn between liberation (the overthrow of a repressive regime) and the establishment of liberty (the foundation of a lawful regime that respects the rights of its people). All too frequently liberation goes unaccompanied by liberty. Events in Poland in recent months have reversed...

The Current Cinema THE ITCH TO ACT by Pauline Kael.

Musical Events Revivals by Nicholas Kenyon.

A Reporter at Large MINIHYDRO by John McPhee. REPORTER AT LARGE about restoring small-scale hydroelectric power facilities in New York State. In the past the power of falling water was utilized but in the middle years of the century electricity generated by big utilities had become cheap to the point where small-scale hydroelectric facilities were costing...

The Theatre Off Broadway by Edith Oliver.

Fiction Six Hours by Saul Steinberg. Six drawings of the same scene at different times during a 24-hour period. The first drawing is a blank divided by four lines, with a tiny tree at the top. Then we see the horizon and a river on which two men are fishing from a boat; then a...

Fiction In Jewel by Mary A. Robison. The narrator is an art teacher who grew up in a coal mining town called Jewel. She went to college at the Rhode Island School of Design, but she felt lost there. She returned to Jewel and now she teaches art at the high school. It depresses her to be...

Comment by Berton Roueche. A friend writes: I am sitting at ease thirty or forty thousand feet above the earth and travelling at a speed undreamed of hardly a generation ago. Leaning a little to the left, I look down. It is a view, a vision, an experience unimaginable not much more than a...

Books Fiabe Italiane by John Updike.

Dancing Uptown, Downtown, and Out on the Island by Arlene Croce.

The Talk of the Town Anna, Pete, Louisa, and Mike by Lillian Ross. Talk story about an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Moorhead C. Kennedy, Sr., the parents of Moorhead C. Kennedy, Jr., one of the Foreign Service officers recently returned from captivity in Iran. The Kennedys, says writer, are Manhattan's only hostage parents. Mrs. KennedyNAnnaNdoes most of the talking, describing her job...

Fiction Threnody for Thirty Thousand Butlers by H. F. Ellis. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management" is mentioned in a story about the shortage of butlers in England. Writer quotes from the book passages describing the domestic duties of butlers...

Jazz JAZZ PRES by Whitney Balliett. Entire column on the life and career of tenor saxophonist Lester Young, born in 1909 and died in 1959. Young can be heard on the five volumes of Columbia's recently completed "The Lester Young Story" and on the Time-Life "Lester Young...

Poetry The Pursuit of Happiness by John Ashbery. It came about that there was no way of passing...

Poetry Going West by Robert Penn Warren. Westward the Great Plains are lifting, as you...