The Talk of the Town Bartok in the Morning by Lillian Ross. Talk story about a visit last week to apartment in Manhattan House of clarinetist Benny Goodman, where writer observed a rehearsal of Bela Bartok's "Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet and Pianoforte." Accompanying the 71-year old Mr. Goodman were violinist Yehudi Menuhin, 64, and 21-year old pianist Paul Coker. Coker...

U. S. Journal THOUGHTS ON CHANGING NAMES by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL: REEDLEY, CALIF., about the controversy surrounding the decision to change the name of Reedley College to King's River College. Even though the Board of Trustees voted for the name change in June, at least one powerful citizen of Reedley continues to fight the change. Mel Salwasser, an agreeable...

Fiction Second Opinion by R. K. Narayan. Narrator is a young Indian man named Sambu who lives with his widowed mother, from whom he feels alienated because she is irrational and old-fashioned. He spends his days in a cafe where he talks with journalists, councillors, and intellectuals. Or he reads philosophy from books his father held...

Fiction ... From Our Spring Catalogue by Jack Ziegler. Cartoon parody of garden catalogue. Six items are pictured: Manual lawnmower, with caption, "Fell Zillions of blades of grass in mere hours! Incredible tool!...only $69.99." Shovel, with caption, "Dig hundreds of feet beneath the earth! Any depth! any width!...only $10.99." Hose, with caption, "Conduct veritable oceans of water...

The Talk of the Town Children by Elizabeth Macklin. Talk story about a nightime demonstration in Harlem one recent Friday-a candlelight march and vigil held by the Harlem community to show support for the families of the children killed in Atlanta. (Note-Since July 1979 twenty-two Atlanta black children have have been found dead or reported missing...

The Theatre Dead Souls by Edith Oliver.

Fiction Prue by Alice Munro. Prue is a woman in her late 40's; she is likeable and cheerful, doesn't take herself too seriously, works in a plant shop in Toronto, and used to live with a neurologist named Gordon. Both she and Gordon are divorced. She no longer lives with him, but he comes...

Reflections SINKING INTO MATERIALISM by William Pfaff. REFLECTIONS about West Germany's search for political identity. For 3 decades, until the Carter years, West Germany had looked to the U.S. for security and leadership, thereby finding solutions to the two lasting problems of German political civilization, which are to find an animating idea and also a limit. Although...

Our Local Correspondents HODES' BLUES by Whitney Balliett. OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS about the blues pianist Art Hodes, who will be at Hanratty's on the Upper East side the first week in April. Hodes was raised in Chicago and has spent most of his professional life there. He did spend twelve years in New York but he has returned...

Books After the War by Naomi Bliven.

Musical Events Blood and Thunder by Nicholas Kenyon.

Comment by Jeremy Bernstein. That mathematically inclined friend of ours who wrote to us about his chess machine has written to us again. Here is what he has been up to recently: Having learnt to beat the chess-playing machine, I have replaced it with two new obsessions: a Rubik's Cube and a UFO...

Poetry Drift Fence by James Galvin. Whose hungry souls are these...

Poetry In Umbria by Howard Moss. The wrong assumption flirted with the possible...