The Talk of the Town Premiere by Richard Harris. Talk story about a birthday celebration for civil libertarian Osmond K. Fraenkel. Cites his arguing 26 cases before the Supreme Court, one of them De Jonge v. Oregon, the other the U.S. v. Richardson...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. The other day we turned to an inside page of the "Times" and read that the London "Sunday Times" had warned that if the economic crisis in England continued, "most of the props of our social universe-prosperity, justice, work itself-will be knocked aside". A few days before we...

Fiction Friendly Neighbor by Garrison Keillor. Walter "Dad" Benson hosted the "Friendly Neighbor" show from radio station WLT in Minneapolis. He was born in Chaffee, N.D., in 1894. He began his career as a travelling seed salesman, getting to know every crossroad in the Midwest. The radio show included his "daughter" & "son-in-law" &...

The Talk of the Town Zinka by Jane Boutwell. Talk story about Mme. Zinka Milanov, the Yugoslav soprano & the star of the annual Christmas party of the New York Opera Club. The party was held at The Ballroom, a new SoHo restaurant, 36 years, to the day, after Mme. Milanov made her Metropolitan debut. She was toasted by...

Letter from London by Mollie Panter-Downes. The Chinese exhibition that will be at the Royal Academy until Jan. 23rd is a splendid London event that is drawing huge crowds. The show is of the treasures excavated by archeologists of the People's Republic of China since 1949 and is being sponsored by the "Times" and the "Sunday...

The Talk of the Town Tour by Victor Chen. Talk story about a reporter who cross-country skied to work through Central Park. Relates what he saw in the city, which had been hit with the most severe snowstorm in two years. He saw no other skiers, & called two ski shops--Princeton Skate & Ski Chalet and the...

The Talk of the Town Visible Symbol by Richard Harris. Talk story about a birthday celebration for 85-year-old civil libertarian Osmond K. Fraenkel. He still works full time for the firm of Hays, St. John, Abramson & Heilbron...

Letter from Washington by Richard H. Rovere. The Geneva conference on the Middle East began Dec. 21, formally under the aegis of the UN but actually presided over by Andrei Gromyko, of the Soviet Union, and his American counterpart, Henry Kissinger, with representation by all parties to the Yom Kippur War except Syria. Nothing has been said...

Fiction Nothing: A Preliminary Account by Donald Barthelme. It's not the yellow curtains. Nor curtain rings. Nor is it bran... Heidegger suggests that "Nothing nothings" - a calm sensible idea with which Sarte, among others, disagrees. (What Heidegger thinks about nothings is not nothing.) Heidegger points us toward dread. Having borrowed a cup of dread from Kierkegaard, he spills...

The Theatre Not Waving But Drowning by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town S.F.S. by Gerald Jonas. Talk story as present at a pre-opening party for the Science Fiction Shop. Miss Fish, an American painter, is a S.F. fan...

Musical Events A Christmas Game by Desmond Shawe-Taylor.

Comment by Donald Barthelme. A rather well-off Montclair man, following Pres. Nixon's lead in giving his San Clemente estate to the nation, has decided to buy the World Trade Center and give it to the nation. "I will, of course, retain a life interest in the property", he writes, "and my wife and...

Profiles A NEW POLITICS IN ATLANTA by Fred Powledge. PROFILE of Atlanta, Ga., where the city's white power structure has had to adapt to the changes effected by the election of a liberal Jewish mayor in 1969, & of liberal black mayor Maynard Jackson in '73 (the first black to hold such a job in any major city in...

The Current Cinema SURVIVOR by Pauline Kael.

The Talk of the Town Progress by Geoffrey T. Hellman. Talk story about an interview with Dr. Van Gelder, the mammalogy chief of the Museum of Natural History. He created a 94-foot fibre-glass-and-plastic blue whale, which will replace the model of a 76-foot blue whale that had been displayed from 1907 to 1969. Long known...

Poetry Watergate Elegy by Robert Patrick Dana. Justice corrupts...