Annals of Medicine SANDY. by Berton Roueche. ANNALS OF MEDICINE about outbreak of mass hysteria at the Bay Harbor Elementary School in Miami Beach on May 13, 1974. Tells how Dr. Joel L. Nitzkin, then chief of the Office of Consumer Protection, went to the school with an industrial hygienist, Carl DiSalvo, and a staff physician, Myriam...

Recollections SUMMER PLACES by Brendan Gill. REFLECTIONS about summer places which intersperses the writer's recollections of childhood with the history of resort development in North America. "Taking the waters" at springs and spas was always popular in Europe. The first American resorts were often near springs. They were intended to further a person's physical and spiritual...

Fiction Three Illuminations in the Life of an American Author by John Updike. Henry Bech, an author drying up in his middle years, lives at 99th and Riverside. He speaks at colleges to support himself while working on a new novel, "Think Big." Once, in Pennsylvania, Bech drives to Cedar Meadow, home of Marvin Federbusch, his most devoted fan. Federbusch has been writing...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. Comment about freedom. Discusses the nature of freedom which is a principle of political life giving no precedence to spiritual over material needs and remaining neutral in regard to all causes. Discusses the American Civil Liberties Union's support of the right of the National Socialist Party of America, a neo...

The Current Cinema PROXIMITY by Penelope Gilliatt.

The Talk of the Town Two Ceremonies by Isabel Logan. Talk story about ceremony in front of City Hall when Pres. Carter signed the bill granting the city one billion six hundred and fifty million dollars' worth of federal loan guarantees over the next four years. Tells about frogmen who explored the East River checking for explosives in the area...

Fiction Z-Ing & Being by Daniel Menaker. Parody of beet-seller "Running & Being" by Dr. George Sheehan: There are times when I am not sure whether I am a sleeper who spends some of his time awake or someone who is often awake but spends much of his time asleep. My sleeping and waking selves are...

The Talk of the Town Typewriter Man by Kennedy Fraser. Talk story about getting an old Imperial typewriter repaired in Yorkshire, England."A reporter visiting the English countryside writes: I've been staying in deepest Yorkshire, working on a borrowed typewriter-an ancient and boxy Imperial, whose gleaming coal-black dignity would qualify it for a country undertaker's office work. When...

The Race Track by G. F. T. Ryall. Tragedy marred last Saturday's running of the Alabama Stakes, the classic for three-year-old fillies, when Sally Gibson's Caesar's Wish, the 4-5 favorite suffered a heart attack as she was leading the field half a mile from home and fell dead at the three-eighths pole. Danny Wright, who...

The Talk of the Town Two Ceremonies by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about christening the E.M. Frimbo railroad car in Grand Ledge, Michigan. The car was named after E. M. Frimbo, railroad buff. He christened the car. The E.M. Frimbo is a food-bar-bookshop-souvenir car. Howie Samelson, the co-proprietor of the N.Y. railroadiana shop Broadway Limited owns...

Our Far-Flung Correspondents DEDICATION by James Reston. OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about Hyden, Ky., populatio 500, and the visit of ex-Pres. Richard Nixon there for the opening of the new Richard M. Nixon Recreation Center on July 2. It was the former President's first formal public appearance since he resigned from office on Aug. 9, 1974...

Fiction To Rome by David C. Harrop. Norman Pettigrew, a young American, boards a bus in Florence for his first trip to Rome, full of visions of ancient history. He has been sick and has to ask the tour-guide, a pretty 19-year-old girl, to stop at a toilet. Afterwards she sits down next to...

Poetry Cockaigne (Homage to Pieter Bruegel, the Elder) by Norman Dubie. Below the hill, between a gorge and azure maritime...