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Bernard Malamud said “…a short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime. The drama is tense, happens fast, and is more often than not outlandish. In a few pages the story portrays the complexity of a life while producing the surprise and effect of knowledge…” According to Helen Haines, “The short story may be, perhaps, best defined as the equivalent in fiction to the lyric in poetry and the one‐act play in drama: the intensified, concentrated expression of an idea or theme…It demands greater, but less sustained, mastery of style than does the novel…The brevity of the short story, while it limits, also makes for freedom…” The freedoms it allows include posing problems without solutions, ignoring logical development to a conclusion, and referring to vague ideas which are never detailed. These allowable omissions of the short story lead to its great power for the reader. For a short story is only completed through the interaction of its reader. “The readers are forced into active collaboration: they flesh out the story through memory, sympathy, and insight, and they feel its truth as immediately as a toothache.”

Passages, seasons, turning points—all of these popular terms refer to periods of transition in our lives. I am careful to say “our lives” because these stages are universal; for the most part, they are expected and accepted.

Where do you find the books?“ is the question I am most frequently asked about the developmental task (or lifetask) approach to reading guidance. It is a good question, and not easy to answer, because most traditional library tools are not organized by life themes. Sometimes a life crisis is also a catalog subject heading, such as “divorce” or “death,” but “living on a reduced income,” or “loss of status” are not commonly used terms in cataloging or indexing.

If you are 30 or older, you are middle‐aged by someone's criteria. When the college students of the 1970s declared “Don't trust anyone over 30,” did you think they would be someday talking about you? And what about those who say “Life begins at 40”? Did you ever believe them?

Child abuse is no longer something we must talk about in cautious tones. The creation of the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse and the launching of a national awareness campaign in 1984 has resulted in a welcome but typical media blitz which has raised our consciousness but given little in the way of a solution. Parents are turning to the library for materials to help them introduce the hereto‐fore unspeakable of child abuse to their children.

PROMPTLY UPON the ending of the seemingly interminable Christmas/New Year holiday—I just had to go back to work between the two, because another plate of cold‐turkey‐plus‐cold‐Xmas‐pud would have driven me insane—there landed upon my desk the first issue of the LAR vacancies supplement, a sheet of job advertisements which is to be issued fortnightly while publication of the Times literary supplement Is suspended, and may even be continued thereafter on a permanent basis if demand warrants.

In the last column, I reviewed some recent nonfiction works on the dilemma of the housewife. The fictional housewife has, I feel, as much to tell us—especially about the coping mechanisms of modern women.

A housewife is just a housewife, that's all. Low on the totem pole. I can read the paper and find that out….Somebody who goes out and works for a living is more important than somebody who doesn't….Deep down I feel what I'm doing is important. But you just hate to say it, because what are you? Just a housewife….”

How often today do you hear a woman described as “pleasingly plump”? Never, because this is the “Fitness Generation.” In the past, a woman could be heavy (or zoftig), but today overweight women are just plain fat, ugly, and unhealthy. Even the euphemism “overweight” means “unhealthy.” It comes from “over the weight for maximum life expectancy”—or over the ideal weight determined by life insurance companies—and has extremely negative connotations itself.

You never know, that's all, there's no way of knowing … Last week our lives were all right … But now I think we're going to be murdered. Just like that.” So begins The Shadow Knows, a novel whose major theme is a woman's panic about the possibility of danger to her family. She is not alone; Americans are increasingly fearful of violence as it becomes more pervasive. According to the 1982–83 Statistical Abstract of the U.S., published by the Bureau of the Census, one of every 30 people over 12 years old was the victim of violence in 1980. And those statistics refer only to reported violence; they do not include the victims of private violence: child abuse, incest, or spouse beating. Such domestic violence more than doubled between 1976 and 1981, and accounts for more than one‐third of the nation's police forces' time. The statistics pertaining to women are particularly worrisome. A woman's chances of being raped at some point in her life are now one in ten—and her chances of being injured by battery are even greater. Such statistics are very frightening.