The Talk of the Town Literary Luncheon by Ian Frazier. Talk story, in the form of an outline, about a literary luncheon sponsored by Brentano's bookstore, at the Roosevelt Hotel...

Profiles II-THE SEARCH by Robert Coles. PROFILE of Walker Percy, writer & philosopher. By 1958 Percy was determined to tie his philosophical ideas down firmly & give them the life that a novel can offer. He stopped writing philosophical articles & slowed down his flow of essays & book reviews. The matters he had written about...

Television Sweetening by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about "The Madhouse Brigade", a half-hour television comedy show of short takes, blakcout sketches, and parody commercials, which appeared on the air last Friday night at 11:30 on Channel 11. It is the first New York cable-TV show to make it onto regular television and-except...

The Current Cinema by Pauline Kael. Review of "The Boys from Brazil". This picture is another of Lew Grade's international blockbuster packages; the deals are worked out in terms of story elements that will sell and of performers with followings in as many markets as possible. The films are assembled. Lord Grade (known in film circles...

The Talk of the Town Collecting by Jamaica Kincaid. Talk story: "Information gathered from press releases picked up at the World Plate Collectors Fair, recently held at the Statler Hilton." 'These are not plates to be eaten off, but to be admired to be traded, to be acquired-often for surprisingly large sums of money.' 'Plate collecting bids fair...

The Race Track by G. F. T. Ryall. Plans for a new grandstand and clubhouse at Garden State Park, to replace the ones destroyed by fire on Apr. 14, 1977, and for the resumption of racing at the Cherry Hill track in 1980 were presented to an approved unanimously by the township authority at a meeting on Sept...

The Talk of the Town Show Day by Kennedy Fraser. Talk story about Show Day in Yorkshire, England. It is a letter from a friend who summered in the English countryside. Show Day, held on a Wednesday in September, marks the turn of the year. The day was blanketed in a wetting mist. Mr. Allison had loosed sheep to nibble...

Dancing by Arlene Croce.

Fiction A Week of Prayer by Linda Grace Hoyer. On a Sunday in October, Ada Gibson's was among the names of those Pastor Pruitt (of a Lutheran church in Pennsylvania) prayed for and asked the congregation to remember in prayer throughout the following week. Ada's husband Marty, had died, and her son Christopher, past 40 years of age, was...

The Theatre EARLY CASE by Brendan Gill.

Comment by Jonathan Schell. Comment about Pres. Carter's success at the Camp David summit meeting between Pres. Sadat and Prime Minister Begin. In his speech to Congress, reporting on the success of the summit, Carter described the history of the Middle East as "a textbook for pessimism, a demonstration that diplomatic ingenuity was no...

The Sporting Scene A NEW ERA BEGINS: FLUSHING MEADOW PARK by Herbert Warren Wind. SPORTING SCENE about 1978 U.S. Open Tennis Championship at the new National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow Park, Queens. Except for a three year interval in the 1920's, this is the first year since 1915 that the Open has not been played at Forest Hills, home of the West...

Fiction Confession of a Hijacker by Heinrich Boll. A Russian mechanic accused of hijacking makes his confession to Prosecutor Gospodin after getting caught at the airport with a fake gun made of wood and shoe polish. He explains that he longed to go to Denmark not because it was a non-socialist country, but although it was not...

Poetry Another Invitation by Richard Howard. Lord, they sound triste, my first love poems...

Poetry Sweep... Sweep Two Victorian Photographs by James Kirkup. In the back lane, the net-mender with his shuttle...