Comment Comment-Part 1 by Ann Beattie. A young woman we know writes from Paris about the last Sunday in July. It was raining&she bought a bouquet of flowers. She didn't want to go back to her hotel&wondered where she might go en deshabille and avec fleurs. She decided to take a taxi...

The Talk of the Town Tartar by William McKibben. Talk story about a dental information booth in Union Square Park, promoting new Crest toothpaste in a silver box with tartar-control formula. Writer visited it last month. The booth included TV screens, someone speaking about dental cleaning, artificial tartar on a giant tooth&an automated Tartar I.Q. test...

The Current Cinema THE GREAT WHITE HOPE by Pauline Kael.

Our Far-Flung Correspondents BEAR NEWS by Ian Frazier. OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about bears and newspaper stories about them, principally in Montana where writer lives & where Glacier Park is located. Through the winter about 650 grizzly bears sleep in the mountains in dens, usually at altitudes above 6000 feet. Sometimes as early as March, sometimes as late...

Fiction Current Listings (Illus.) by Bruce McCall. Parody of newspaper real estate listings including 12 pictures of houses and captions underneath with the headings "For Ambience Chasers," "Money Talks," "Nothing To Sneer At," "Your Pied-a-Terre in the Sky," "Oceanfront Property Going Fast," "Charm is a Four-Letter Word," "A Rural Corner of Connecticut," "Not For...

Comment Comment-Part 2 by William McKibben. A young man writes about a friend who mistakenly thought that Minneapolis was on the same parallel as Juneau, Alaska. Writer corrected him&thought of his mistake when reading of Reagan's praise for the"reformist"government of S. Africa. Writer lists a number of assertions made by the Presidents...

Jazz by Whitney Balliett. Complete column on this extravagantly gifted pianist, who died on Nov. 5, 1956. Biographical facts and evaluation of his work by the writer and others. Also anecdotes about him...

The Talk of the Town Beams by William McKibben. Talk story about the restoration of the Church of the As cension. Writer spoke with Edgar Tafel, a former apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, who has spent his summer at the restoration. His office is on 11th Street, one block from the church , which is the oldest church on Fifth...

Fiction S. L. by Harold Brodkey. S.L." is about a child's relationship with his adoptive father. At the time of the story, S.L. is thirty-three years old and his son is three. They are taking a walk together in the rain, in a small town in Illinois. S.L. died at the age of forty-four...

The Talk of the Town Toys by Lois Metzger. Talk story about toys for the On-Site Program, a new therapy program for children and adolescents in South Bronx. Two young therapists--Helaine Eisenberg, a social worker, and KARIN Brenner, a psychologist--drove up to Toys "R" Us, a low markup toy supermarket in Yonkers, and in three hours...

Books by Alistair Cooke.

Poetry The Empire of Chance by Mark Strand. Its terrain is dry and spreads out so you glimpse only bits...

Poetry The Shroud by Galway Kinnell. Lifted by its tuft...

Poetry Willow, Wishbone, Warblers by Brendan Galvin. The way this willow traps...