A Reporter at Large JOURNEY TO PAKISTAN by Richard Reeves. REPORTER AT LARGE about Pakistan. The Pakistanis have provided refuge to nearly three million Afghans fleeing the fighting in Afghanistan. The refugees began coming in large numbers in the spring and summer of 1978, when a new Communist government in Kabul (which had taken power in a coup d'etat against...

The Talk of the Town Pass It On by Lincoln Caplan. Talk story about a gathering in the United States Capitol of all but one of seventeen winners of the 1984 National Heritage Fellowships, given by the National Endowment for the Arts, to "a Master Traditional Artist who has contributed to the shaping of our artistic traditions and to preserving the...

Comment by Elizabeth Tallent. A young woman who lives in New Mexico writes: This afternoon, about 3 o'clock, there was a snake in the studio where I work. It entered through the crack below the door, which was closed. The snake moved so quickly that I looked up from the typewriter disbelieving. It appeared...

The Current Cinema TIGHT LITTLE THRILLER by Pauline Kael.

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL CRASH! BAM! WHUMP! by Andy Logan. The issue of church-vs.-state has been playing a large part in this year's Presidential election campaign. In this city it started with a television interview with Archbishop John O'Connor, who answered questions put by a dozen reporters, most of them with small Catholic newspapers. He made the statement...

Fiction Love Trouble Is My Business by Veronica Geng. Story starts with two quotes: "...subjects such as the Soviet Union seem to haunt Mr. Reagan the way vows to read Proust dog other Americans at leisure," (Francis X. Clines, in the Sunday Times), and "This may be the only time in history in which the words 'Mr. Reagan' and...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town The States by Thomas Zito. Talk story about a tour of the S.S. United States in Norfolk, given to the writer by Nicholas Bachko, who spent a good part of his sixty-odd years on land and sea looking after the ocean liner. Tells about the ship. She was designed by William Francis Gibbs. He...

Fiction Negatives by Andrea Lee. Sarah had almost grown up with Curry Daniels. Their mothers were distant cousins and had been best friends in high school. Curry's family lived in Atlanta. Throughout Sarah's childhood she saw many Daniels-family snapshots and she paid two visits to Atlanta. From these trips she knew that Curry was...

The Talk of the Town We Buffet Butler by William McKibben. Talk story about Buffet Butler, a new invention that will be on the shelves of department stores in many major cities soon. Buffet Butler is a set of four mats (measured thirteen by eighteen inches) with either twelve numbers (1-to-12 or 12-to-24) or 12 letters (A...

The Talk of the Town Local Hero by Alastair Reid. Talk story about Bill Forsyth, the Scottish writer-director whose last film, "Local Hero," attracted and delighted attention far beyond the boundaries of Scotland. He was in New York on a visit in advance of his new film "Comfort and Joy." Black-haired, fiercely bearded, with a blunt Glasgow accent...

Poetry The Furniture by John Updike. To things we are ghosts, soft shapes/in their blindness that push and pull...

Poetry On the Veranda We Drink Gin-And-Tonic by Sandra Alcosser. The elephant ears/tired of hearing witty stories/twist flat...