The Air (On Television) Jim Peck's Cabaret by Michael J. Arlen.

The Theatre LEGENDARY FIGURES by Brendan Gill.

Fiction Fogbound in Avalon by Elizabeth McGrath. Annie O'Neill, 42, leaves her husband in Vancouver and takes her three children to St. John's, Newfoundland, her hometown. On the plane she runs into Hugh, an old boyfriend, whom she hasn't seen since she was 21. They sit together and she tells him she has left her husband. Hugh...

The Talk of the Town Product by Ian Frazier. Talk story as the location of a new store, Plus Discount Foods. This low overhead store, where patrons must bring their own bags, is on Northern Boulevard in Flushing...

Books As We Were by Naomi Bliven.

A Reporter at Large 1980: KENNEDY by Elizabeth Drew. REPORTER AT LARGE about Sen. Edward Kennedy's campaigning in Iowa, in early Jan., before the state's Democratic precinct caucuses. It was feared that the Kennedy campaign could collapse. Among other things, it was running out of money. If Kennedy did poorly in Iowa there would be fewer contributions. Politicians whose...

The Talk of the Town The Forest of Arden by Jane Boutwell. Talk story about new production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It." The play's director, Andrei Serban previously mounted a version of the play at La Rochelle, France, with American actors, speaking English to a largely French-speaking audience...

The Current Cinema UP FROM POSSUM GULLY by Roger Angell.

Musical Events Politics by Nicholas Kenyon.

On Television Comment by Jonathan Schell. Comment on having heard 5 political commentators say on television that under certain circumstances the U.S. might open nuclear hostilities with the Soviet Union. They were persuaded that if the Soviet Union should proceed from its invasion of Afghanistan to intervention in Iran, the U.S., faced with a takeover of...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. In future generations-if any-some historian may find it worthy of a footnote that during a recent weekend TV viewers were told by normally sensible political commentators that faced with a Soviet takeover of its oil supply in the Middle East, the U.S. might resort to the threat or...

The Talk of the Town Compliance by Mark Singer. Talk story about the new, portable indoor running track at Madison Square Garden, which has a plywood surface and a plywood infield. It was set up the other day for its debut, at the Vitalis/U.S. Olympic Invitational track-and-field meet. About 20 carpenters and laborers worked on it...

The Talk of the Town by Mary D. Kierstead. Talk story by a female viewer of Super Bowl XIV on television. Ferragamo was quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams in their defeat by the Pittsburgh Steelers. We are told that Ferragamo, a premed student, did not fumble the ball and looks like an Italian god out of a Fellini...

Fiction Nana Hami Ba Reba by Garrison Keillor. This is a satirical, futuristic story occurring some time after 1984, the year when "Metric time" came into use. The narrator, an advisor to the "Chief Exec," the "C.E.," has been largely responsible for America's "total metrification," something he had suggested before the C.E.'s election as a remedy to...

Poetry Kirkpatrick Playing Bach by Peter Sacks. A white thread led him to the harpsichord...

Poetry Two Poems by Galway Kinnell. On the tidal mud, just before sunset...