What was going on when I was born?

NORTH TARRYTOWN WITH the auto industry hard pressed, county officials have begun to work with General Motors to explore ways to assure the continued operation here of the company's assembly plant, one of the county's largest employers. County and G. M. officials met here last Monday in what they said was a follow-up meeting to talks held in Detroit on Oct. 8. After last week's meeting, County Executive Alfred B. DelBello said no decisions had been made. He declined to disclose details of the conversations but did say that further talks were planned.

A MARGIN OF HOPE An Intellectual Autobiography. By Irving Howe. 352 pp. San Diego and New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $14.95. One of the few advantages of growing older is the privilege of writing one's memoirs, and the generation of writers known as the New York intellectuals has lately seized this advantage with a vengeance. Never known for its reticence, this voluble, combative group, quiescent during the last two decades, is once again enlivening the scene, hastening to give testimony before it's too late - even before old age has quite set in. William Barrett's ''The Truants,'' the memoirs of Lionel Abel that have been appearing in Commentary, and now Irving Howe's ''A Margin of Hope'' are the work of men still vigorous enough to argue their side of things with considerable energy; their memories of the 30's and 40's possess the same polemical edge that distinguished them in those turbulent decades, when it seemed as if every issue of Partisan Review carried some fervent symposium on ''The Situation of American Writing,'' ''Our Country and Our Culture,'' ''Religion and the Intellectuals'' - what Philip Rahv once called ''the big issues.''

First article of a series appearing periodically on the new balance of power in the Middle East since the war in Lebanon. WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 - In the aftermath of the war in Lebanon, Reagan Administration officials say they are seeking to take advantage of what they regard as unparalleled opportunities for peace in the Middle East in the short run. But they fear that in the long run new power realities are tugging toward impasse. ''We are in a much better strategic position than we've been for 35 years,'' a White House official said. ''The Russians are less of a worry, and there is plenty of oil around so that we don't have to worry as much about Arab oil power. But all this means is that we are positioned to facilitate a process, that we have a lot more responsibility without much more power.''

HAMMONTON THE state's hotel-casinos are much more interested in developing train service between Atlantic City and New York than between Atlantic City and Philadelphia, a would-be railway operator disclosed last week. Thomas E.Frawley, president of Atlantic City Railway Inc., said at a news conference that, because investment from casinos was necessary for such rail service, his company was now proposing direct express service between Pennsylvania Station in New York and Atlantic City rather than from Philadelphia. Mr. Frawley said that several hotel-casinos would help to subsidize such a rail line by giving passengers partial fare rebates. In addition, he said, Resorts International Hotel-Casino has pledged to underwrite the $100,000 or so needed for research and engineering studies to determine whether such rail service would be profitable.

APARTLY vacant industrial area along Brooklyn's East River w aterfront -considered to be as rich in development potential as it i s in architectural history - is the focus of stepped-up efforts to b uild a vibrant complex of recreational, commercial and, possibly, r esidential facilities. But with the efforts have come clashing views over how much of the shabby 10-block area should be redeveloped, and how much, if any of it, should be maintained as an industrial center providing badly needed unskilled and semiskilled jobs. The differences raise issues of neighborhood-revival and economic-development strategy and illustrate how entrepreneurial stakes and local interests can clash on development. The area, a 10-minute walk from the downtown Brooklyn civic and commercial center, lies between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway as its eastern boundary. It is part of the Fulton Ferry district.

Al Arbour, coach of the Islanders, gave the team a day off Sunday but, as he made clear, ''not on merit.'' His players were tired, and Arbour said they needed a rest. Arbour made his assessment at the end of a free-wheeling, wide-open game tonight in which the Islanders beat the New Jersey Devils, 8-5. The victory was hardly ''on merit,'' not the kind of orderly, disciplined pattern play with which the Islanders have won the Stanley Cup the last three seasons. The winners just happened to play less ineptly than the Devils.

CBS News Poll shows public is being

STANFORD WINS; MARYLAND VICTOR STANFORD, Calif., Oct. 30 (By United Press International) - Stanford, behind the passing of John Elway and the running of Mike Dotterer, scored 30 points within 11 and a half minutes today and sent Washington to its first loss of the season. The defeat ended a 10-game winning streak for the Huskies, who had been ranked second in the nation, behind Pittsburgh, in the poll by United Press International and first in the The Associated Press poll. Dotterer rushed for 106 yards and two touchdowns, and Elway completed 20 of 30 passes for 265 yards. Vincent White returned a punt 76 yards for another Stanford touchdown.

PATERSON THIS city's library system - a fountain of culture and education for successive waves of immigrants and their families - is teetering on the brink of collapse. Four of its seven branches have been closed since September and, despite vigorous fund-raising efforts, the three remaining branches and the main Danforth Memorial Library have only enough money to stay open for one more week. According to Leo T. Fichtleberg, the library director, 45-day layoff notices for the staff of 37 employees come due next Sunday. ''We're living week to week,'' Mr. Fichtleberg said. ''It's extremely difficult, tiring and very demoralizing.'' Paterson's library system, like others around the state, is a victim of cutbacks in Federal aid, the state's cap law - which prohibits an annual increase of more than a 5 percent in municipal budgets - and hard economic times, which have eroded private support.

WHEN the fall television season began, Sharon Dobkin of Brooklyn packed her bags, got into her wheelchair, and kissed her husband and 1-year-old son goodbye. She was off to Hollywood. Mrs. Dobkin has no intentions of being a star. She is one of scores of people sharing the same stage: they have rare diseases for which successful drugs are unavailable, usually because manufacturers find little profit in a drug that has a limited market. Mrs. Dobkin was heading West to be an adviser for a ''Quincy'' program, aired last week, that told her story and that of ''orphan drugs.''

NASSAU and Suffolk, with 17 percent of the statewide vote in the 1980 and 1978 elections, could provide the ''swing'' votes in the hotly contested election for Governor, Republican and Democratic politicians feel. Although Republicans have the enrollment edge over Democrats in both counties, independent voters on the Island have often switched party preference from election to election. They filled the gap for statewide Democrats in past elections and in some cases increased the Republican majorities in the two counties. Two large voting groups on the Island - Italian-Americans and Roman Catholics - add another element of uncertainty and possible swing votes. The politicians' thinking, however, may not hold true. The two Long Island counties were expected to be the deciding element in the Democratic gubernatorial primary last month but while Mayor Koch won both counties, running even better than he did in New York City, he lost statewide.

THREE years ago, Laffit Pincay Jr. finally won a long struggle with his weight, a struggle that had shattered his physical and mental health and nearly ended his spectacular career. He calls himself a changed man now, appreciative of how close he came to selfdestruction and determined never to regress. Even so, there have been times recently, the jockey says, when he feels like he is ''killing myself all over again and I can't stop.'' Only a few years ago, thoroughbred racing was a sport with a season instead of a night-and-day, 52-week merry-go-round. When Pincay was the leading rider in the country each year from 1971 to 1974, and close to the top in the next four years despite torturing himself with diet pills and sweat boxes in his long struggle to keep his weight down, he rode at one track each day. There were a few slow weeks during the year when he could rest.