Fiction What to Do Next by Bruce McCall. Parody of the recent break-up of A. T. & T. OYou are now your own telephone company. Your own logo should not violate these registered trademarks in wording or design. Before the men arrive at your premises, make certain you have: Disassembled each telephone registered in your name. Forwarded...

Comment by George W. S. Trow. Writer comments on a phrase he read in a recent issue of Town & Country. It is "besotted with her lure." The characters are Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes and Yves Saint Laurent. The Vicomtesse has agreed to share her clothes with others (in the sense of designing some and selling...

The Current Cinema VANITY, VAINGLORY, AND LOWLIFE by Pauline Kael.

The Talk of the Town Three Classes by Alastair Reid. Babel: First part of three-part Talk story about classes. Writer goes to the Division of Interpretation and Translation at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC. Writer meets Dr. Margareta Bowen and her husband David, and sits in on their class. There are ten students, mostly female, from all over the...

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL THE STATE OF THINGS by Andy Logan. Last April, Mayor Koch announced a crackdown on street peddlers. He organized a task force, overseen by his adviser, Stanley Schlein, and including 120 policemen who would arrest any offenders and confiscate their wares. The crackdown caused a lot of criticism of the Mayor, and although at first the peddlers...

A Reporter at Large THE WIND OF WANTING TO GO IT ALONE by Orville Schell. REPORTER AT LARGE about China. The Chinese Communist Party has declared Mao Zedong's political line defunct. Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, who consolidated his power in a series of political maneuvers in the late 70s, China's doors have been thrown open to the outside world. The Party's current project...

Books by Jeremy Bernstein.

The Talk of the Town Three Classes by William McKibben. Yogaerobics: Third part of three-part talk story about different classes. Mark Becker is the inventor of Yogaerobics, the trademarked exercise system that combines yoga&aerobics. He is introducing it in Manhattan this winter. Writer went to a demonstration where Becker was discussing head-stands. Becker has instructed Erica...

The Theatre by Edith Oliver.

Fiction A Country Wedding by Laurie Colwin. In early June, Freddie Delielle and her husband, Grey, drove to New Brecon, on the Hudson River, where Freddie's oldest friend, Penny Stern, was going to be married at her grandmother's country house. Grey was wearing the suit he'd worn to his wedding eight years ago. Freddie was uncomfortable in...

Poetry The Skewbald Horse by Denis Johnson. I wish to tell about a time/ That's gone...

Poetry All Over by Elizabeth Macklin. All of a sudden one year, we seemed to be dying...