The Talk of the Town Pia Zain by Lincoln Caplan. Talk story about having tea with ten-year-old Pia Zain, daughter of Malaysia's Ambassador to the U.S. Writer first met her at a Washington embassy party celebrating Malaysia's National Day at Malaysia House He asked if he could meet her at a less formal occasion and she invited him...

Musical Events Music in the Silence of the Night by Nicholas Kenyon.

Concert Records / Popular Music Tonal, Electronic, Digital by Winthrop Sargeant.

A Reporter at Large III-THE UNDERCLASS by Ken Auletta. REPORTER AT LARGE about poverty in the U.S. and the underclass. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corp., in N.Y., designed a supported-work experiment called "one of the largest social experiments ever conducted in the U.S." It focussed on the underclass, a group of perhaps nine million Americans. This group experiences...

Dancing Pilobolism by Arlene Croce.

The Talk of the Town Great Locations by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about Elaine Liebowitz and her company called Great Locations, which she runs out of Tenafly, N.J. New York lofts are enjoying a vogue at the moment among people who make TV commercials, and she is in the business of finding places to make commercials and also to shoot...

Fiction Chef's House by Raymond Carver. Wes rented a furnished house from a recovered alcoholic named Chef, and called his wife Edna and asked her to move there with him. The house was on the beach north of Eureka, in California. Wes was on the wagon, he told Edna. He had gotten rid of his girlfriend...

Comment by Alastair Reid. Comment about the impermanence of today's language. Word processors have claimed the center of the stage and have given even manual typewriters an antique look. In a current exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, a word processor presides like an idol over its antecedents. Various patient wordings from the past...

The Talk of the Town Messengering by David Updike. Talk story by a young friend who lives in Brooklyn. In need of money after an extended summer vacation, our friend, returning to the city, found employment as a messenger. He already had a three-speed bike and for the job he bought a good lockNa KryptoniteNand a nylon bag...

Obituary by William Shawn. Obituary of Daniel Lang, who died of leukemia on Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the age of 68. He had been a staff writer for The New Yorker for forty years...

Books Rare Bird by George Steiner.

Fiction The Washing-Machine Tragedy by Stanislaw Lem. Shortly after Ijon Tichy's return from the Eleventh Voyage, newspapers made much of the competition between two washing machine manufacturers. They were producing robot washers of increasing complexity. They came out with sex-pot washers, washers that seduced women, carried on intelligent conversations, etc. A man named Cathodius Mattrass started...

Poetry Caribou Near Arctic by Robert Penn Warren. Now southward, behind us, the forest in white, not merely...

Poetry Plagiarism by Maureen Howard. On the arched bridge by the library...