Comment by Lawrence Weschler. Comment about Poland. It has been almost 3 1/2 years since the workers in the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk launched their seventeen-day strike, during which a committee of suddenly transformed labor leaders forced an astonished government commission into face-to-face negotiations. The most memorable moment occurred shen Andrzej...

The Talk of the Town Coffey and Cahill by Lillian Ross. Talk story about two members of Mayor Koch's staff, and the preparations for a visit by the Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang. Diane Coffey and Linda Cahill are the ones who arranged the logistics of the Premier's visit. After a morning of sightseeing, he attended a luncheon at Gracie Mansion with...

Fiction Going Into Exile by Wright Morris. Coker is vacationing in Alabama. When his wife asked why he was going there, he said something about going into exile. Back in the fall of 1942, Coker had been sent from his home in Michigan to an Army camp in Alabama. Allen, an Army buddy from Harvard, persuaded Coker...

Fiction Farber and Mr. White by Patricia O'Donnell. John Farber, a 32-year-old man recently laid off from his job, takes a job as a live-in companion for Mr. White, an elderly man. In exchange for light housework, Farber doesn't parent. Mr. White is a vegetarian who believes in the hereafter, and has been alone since...

The Art World (The Art Galleries) by Calvin Tomkins.

Books by Whitney Balliett.

The Current Cinema VULGARIANS AND ASCETICS by Pauline Kael.

Reflections WEAPONS AND HOPE I-QUESTIONS by Freeman Dyson. REFLECTIONS about nuclear weapons. Writer compares the two worlds we live in, the male-dominated world of the warriors and the world of victims, consisting mostly of women and children. Writer wants to explain these two worlds to each other. There is prejudice on both sides, and truth in the...

A Reporter at Large THE ITURI FOREST by Alex Shoumatoff. REPORTER AT LARFE about an eleven-day walk through the Ituri Forest in Zaire, a big country on the western side of sub-Saharan Africa. It was formerly the Belgian Congo, and was a colony until 1960. For the past eighteen years it has been ruled by one man, President...

Books by Whitney Balliett.

Poetry Italian Days by Charles Wright. Thinking again of a weekend trip to Ferrara... In 1959...