The Theatre Lena by Brendan Gill.

Musical Events Birthday by Nicholas Kenyon.

The Art World by Calvin Tomkins. Entire column on video art: its recent and current states, a critique of it, and description of some examples...

Concert Records / Popular Music Unfair Neglect by Winthrop Sargeant.

Books Borges by V. S. Pritchett.

The Talk of the Town A Day in Waldo Park by Wallace White. Talk story about the Metropolitan Bicycle Polo Association and its first scrimmage of the season. It took place on a dirt field near 72 St. and Fifth Ave. in Central Park on a recent Sunday. Garrett Bowden, who is the president of the Association, said they all got together for...

Fiction Summer by Joy Williams. Constance and Ben and their daughters by previous marriages are sharing a summer house on an island with their friend Steven. Steven has a different girlfriend to visit each of the five weekends in August. Steven is working on a book, so he only appears after 5 p.m. As a...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. Shortly after the Pope was shot last week, we had a letter from a young friend who says that he rarely enters a church or any other place of worship. He wrote that when he heard the Pope had been shot, he turned on the radio. The radio announcers were...

The Talk of the Town An Offering by Jeremy Bernstein. Talk story about a weekend conference at Rockefeller University to honor the sixtieth birthday of the dissident Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov. Many of the scientists present expressed surprise at how profound and wide-ranging Sakharov's contributions to physics were and still are. Sakharov is now working under almost impossible conditions...

U. S. Journal DIVING THE MYSTERIES OF THE EAST by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL: CHICAGO, about James D. McCawley, professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago, who is able to read the signs on the walls of Chinese restaurants. Although McCawley does not happen to speak Chinese, he has learned a great many Chinese characters, and in fact has written "The...

A Reporter at Large THE PATIENT I-CREEDMOOR PSY. CENTER by Susan Sheehan. REPORTER AT LARGE about Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, a N.Y. State mental institution that serves the 2 million people of Queens. Writer also tells about one of the patients, Sylvia Frumkin (pseud.), 30, and her stay there beginning June 16, 1978. Creedmoor has 70 buildings scattered over 300 acres. It opened...

The Talk of the Town Backstage at Ringling's by Natacha Stewart. Lengthy Talk story about a visit with Gunther Gebel-Williams, the German-born animal trainer and superstar of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Red Show backstage at Madison Square Garden. Since writer last visited him two years ago he has become an American citizen and acquired a giraffe...

Fiction Mission to Mandala by Garrison Keillor. Parody of army comic book, including the continuing story of the 1st Brigade and readers' letters to the magazine's editors. Current issue of the comic book, which is called "1st Brigade," summarizes last month's predicament: Joe and Jim, having landed on Mandala, have become trapped in an abandoned mine shaft...

Poetry A Blessing by Mekeel McBride. From what, sometimes, seems an arbitrary...

Poetry Beethoven, Opus III by Amy Clampitt. Or, conversely, hungers...