The Talk of the Town The Big House by William McKibben. Talk story about Barney Curley, who is raffling off his mansion in Ireland. He wanted to do something different, so he is selling a maximum of nine thousand tickets for two hundred Irish pounds (or two hundred and seventy-five American dollars) each. Early in February an Irish horse-race...

The Theatre by Edith Oliver.

Dancing by Arlene Croce.

Fiction Bachelor of Arts by David Updike. Henry's last term of college was a gray and rainy fall. Two years before, as an imagined remedy for academic fatigue, and as a needed respite from a long, strenuous love affair, he had taken a term off and tripped aimlessly around Europe for several months, and then gone back...

The Talk of the Town Young Brains by Gerald Jonas. Talk story about the Christmas lecture series for students given by the Rockefeller University. In 1827, Michael Faraday, one of the greatest experimenters in the history of science, presented the first of his Christmas lectures for children, which dealt with the marvels of chemistry. Faraday felt that young people could...

A Political Journal by Elizabeth Drew. Writer spends time with Walter Mondale, candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, as he tours the South in early January. Jackson, Mississippi, was the first stop of his Southern swing. Gives details of his visit to Jackson...

Fiction My Father's Friends by William Maxwell. The writer's father died in Lincoln, Illinois, in 1958, after his father's 80th birthday and the writer's 50th. The day after he was buried, the writer called on two of his father's friends, who were not well enough to come to the funeral. The first, Dean Hill, was a man...

The Talk of the Town Boat Show by Wolcott Gibbs. Talk story about the 74th National Boat Show, recently at the Coliseum. Writer went to the Coliseum's second floor, where the largest boats are tradionally displayed, and noticed that many of the boats are the same models as years before. Compared to the last shows, writer found that this year's...

Books by Stanislaw Lem.

Comment by Gwyneth Cravens. According to a recent article in the Times, psychologists have determined that "the mechanics of facial muscle movement are closely tied to the autonomic nervous system, which controls heart rate, breathing, and other vital involuntary functions." Writer has always believed that "we are all mixed up in one another," that...

Books CHANCE AND ORDER by Stanislaw Lem. BOOKS column, translated from the German by Franz Rottensteiner, consisting of an autobiographical essay by Polish writer Lem, in which he discusses many of his books and tells about his life...

Poetry Unless it was Courage by Marvin Bell. Again today, balloons aloft in the hazy here...

Poetry Vacant Lot With Tumbleweed and Pigeons by Amy Clampitt. The rooms gone, hallways and stairwells...