Fiction Snips and Snails by Stephen Tracy. Story about 29-yr.-old Paul, divorced, with a son Matthew. When Matthew was four, parents got divorced & now Paul sees him once a month. His mother will marry Roy, a physicist, & live in a house in Oregon. Paul gave up a job doing graphics for...

Musical Events Thalia by Andrew Porter.

Dancing Reflections on Glass by Arlene Croce.

Anniversary Bridge by William McKibben. Talk story about the celebration for the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge. The night before the big celebration, the writer walked across the Bridge, watching policemen, technicians, and a lot of offical-looking types walking around. A man asked what all the fuss was about. When told, he said...

The Talk of the Town The Float Committee by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about two brothers, John and William Rich, eighteen and seventeen, who call themselves The Float Committee. They present author with a business card--the first two lines of which read, "The High Voltage Dance Ensemble/The Electric Shock Dance Ensemble." They live on E. 106th St., but can...

Profiles A CERTAIN POETRY-I by Ken Auletta. PROFILE of Jean Riboud, chairman of Schlumberger, Inc., a multinational corporation dealing mainly with oil drilling. With assets of $16 billion, there are only three other companies worth more: Exxon, I.B.M., and A.T.&T. Riboud, while a hugely successful capitalist, retains the Socialist political views of his youth and...

Fiction A Trip to Vigia by Elizabeth Bishop. The narrator and her friend M. are staying at a hotel in Belem, Brazil, where they met a poet named Ruy. Ruy was shy and polite and insisted on taking them to see the famous church of Vigia. He drove his own broken-down car to meet them, and was...

Jazz Earl Hines by Whitney Balliett.

The Theatre Off Broadway by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town Redolent by William McKibben. Talk story about the Aromance Aroma Disc System, which Charles of the Ritz Group, Ltd., will market in the fall. It includes a disc player and 36 odors that allow you to choose what your immediate environment will smell like, including a buttered popcorn smell called "Movie Time." Barbara Carver...

Books Fathers and Sons and Fathers and Sons by Naomi Bliven.

Comment by William McKibben. As the economy limps towards recovery, President Reagan's reputation is undergoing a corresponding rehabilitation. While poverty and unemployment still exist, they are no longer written about in op-ed pages, and Reagan's methods will be forgiven their cruelty, at least by the 85% of Americans who live above the poverty...

Letter from Europe by Jane Kramer. Hugh Trevor-Roper published "Hermit of Peking" in 1976, a book about the great forger, Edmund Backhouse. Backhouse was an English eccentric who claimed to have saved secret diaries of a dead Manchu courtier. Backhouse wrote two pornographic memoirs that Trevor-Roper authenticated. Writer compares Backhouse, a master of deception...

Poetry Three White Vases by May Swenson. A Sunday in June...