Dept. of Amplification by Thomas Whiteside. DEPT. OF AMPLIFICATION of E.M. Frimbo's Comment (Sep. 19, 1977) about the decline in country railroad service. Seventeen years ago when the writer and his wife bought a wekend place near West Cornwall, Conn. there was dependable train service between there and New York. Now passengers must travel by bus...

Fiction Your Action Line by Charles Portis. This is a parody of a newspaper advice column. The writer lists several examples of readers' questions and the paper's answers. Readers get information on a Roosevelt dime, mail order boogies, TV reception, Japanese folding napkin clubs, the Apollo Health Spa, and the "detective ants" of Ceylon (which the letter...

The Current Cinema Drip-Dry Comedy by Pauline Kael. Review of "Semi-Tough". The screenwriter was Walter Bernstein...

Musical Events Voices in the Wilderness by Andrew Porter.

Comment by Ian Frazier. A letter from a young man we know tells about his third-floor loft dwelling which faces one of the most harum-scarum intersections in the city where Sixth Ave., Varick Street (Seventh Avenue), West Broadway, and Thompson Street, pinched by the narrowness of Manhattan, dump huge loads of traffic...

Letter from Indonesia by Robert Shaplen. Indonesia is a vast nation of 135 million people of several different races and cultures. Its latest addition, East Timor, became Indonesia's 27th province in mid-1976. Indonesia is the most overbureaucratized nation in Asia, and the 2 billion dollars provided by the international community invites corruption. Corruption is more...

The Race Track Weight the Leveler by G. F. T. Ryall. Louis Wolfson, who has been racing in the name and colors of the Harbor View Farm, has sold his breeding establishment in Ocala, Florida, to Chealis Hammond and Lowell Hughes, both of Ashland, Ky. No horses were involved in the deal...

The Talk of the Town Inflation by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about Thanksgiving Eve block parties on West 77th St. where people watched the balloons being inflated for Macy's parade. Elliot Willensky, one of the editors of the A.I.A. Guide to New York City, was there. He told the writer that the guide is currently out of print but...

The Talk of the Town A Gathering by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about the just-published first American edition of Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage, which is exactly like the 140th British edition, published last year in London, except for the addition of the imprint of the Arco Publishing Co., a N.Y. house. It costs $95 and lists more than 30,000...

The Theatre by Edith Oliver.

Profiles LOOK WHAT I'VE GOT HERE by Calvin Tomkins. PROFILE of Claes Oldenburg, sculptor & artist. He was born in 1929 in Stockholm and spent the first three years of his life in N.Y., where his father, a Swedish diplomat, was posted, the next 3 in Oslo. In 1936 the family moved to Chicago where his father served as...

The Theatre And Now Be Serious For a Moment by Brendan Gill. Review of "The Mandrake." It is by Niccolo Machiavelli, translated by Wallace Shawn, who also acts in it...

Fiction Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz. A nightmarish story in which a man arrives in a nearly deserted, straw-filled train to visit his father, who has died. The father is at a sanatorium where time is set back, alive, but in his final illness. The doctor says the son should go to sleep like everyone...

Our Far-Flung Correspondents EXCELLENCY by John Bainbridge. OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about a visit with Kingman Brewster, Jr., the present Ambassador to Great Britain, and the former president of Yale, at Winfield House, the Ambassadorial residence in London. Tells why he is a strong believer in the special relationship between Britain and the U.S. Gives reasons for...

Books Aryan Physics by Jeremy Bernstein.

The Talk of the Town Truck Story by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about riding from San Francisco to New York in a 1954 Chevrolet pickup truck. Two friends of the writer's took this trip just before Thanksgiving. They are Henry Korman, an architect, and Henry Beard, a carpenter. Tells how they fixed up the truck, an old Coca-Cola delivery...

Poetry December Trees by Charles Simic. Dark wood, I give myself entirely...

Poetry Where Are The Waters Of Childhood? by Mark Strand. See where the windows are boarded up...

Poetry Balloons by Hjalmar Gullberg. I thought the moon a helium balloon...