What was going on when I was born?

IN an era when economic and business affairs dominate the news and appear to shape the nation's character, it is odd how small a percentage of successful fiction deals with the executive suite and the board room. These are the arenas in which the power of money and the workings of ego and ambition connect and from which the consequences of that connection reverberate into millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Yet it would seem to be the view of serious literary personages - whether novelists, critics, editors or inveterate readers -that only in everyday life can suitably serious material be found. Henry James's ''figure in the carpet,'' as he characterized the object of the novelist's search, is now the figure in the linoleum. There are abundant reasons for this fixation with the ordinary, mostly having to do, I think, with the estrangement of the bookish community from the notion of business per se. Anyone wanting an earnest of this need simply look at the managerial and marketing efforts of most publishing companies. But the money part of the examined life has engaged novelists from Jane Austen on. The organized making of money - i.e., selling, finance and management - has been a central concern of the work of Balzac, Dickens, Trollope, Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis.

FINANCING through bond issues is usually considered a governmental or business fund-raising technique. In certain instances, however, a small, private bond issue offered only to residents can be a practical way for cooperatives, condominiums and homeowner associations to raise money for capital improvements. As an alternative to reserve-fund withdrawals, traditional bank financing or special assessments, the bond issue can be ''a brilliant idea,'' said Stuart Saft, a Manhattan lawyer who is vice president of the Council of New York Cooperatives. It should prove less expensive to the housing association than conventional financing, while resident bondholders would clearly regard receiving interest income far more favorably than having to lay out cash in a special assessment.

In a section of Jersey City that lies between the port city's booming commercial district on the waterfront and its brownstone neighborhoods to the west, a former chocolate plant is being converted to 27-unit condominium apartment building.

Notre Dame, suffering through a difficult and disappointing season, played better today than the best Army team in many years. The Irish scored two early touchdowns and went on to beat the Cadets, 24-10, handing Army its first loss of the season. It was an impressive triumph in a game that might have been the last between these two schools in many years. The Cadets had got off to a 5-0 start - their best since 1950 - and had won eight straight games over two seasons, their longest streak in 35 years. They had not beaten the Irish in 27 years and this was supposed to be their best chance in years. b But the Irish, behind the quarterback Steve Beurlein and the running back Allen Pinkett, spoiled the day for the Cadets. And Pinkett treated the 59,075 fans in Notre Dame Stadium with a touch of history. Pinkett, whose spectacular performances have often been overshadowed by the team's mediocre record in the last four seasons, gained 133 yards on 27 carries to set a Notre Dame career rushing record of 3,556 yards. He also scored the third Notre Dame touchdown and helped set up the second Irish score with good runs on a long drive.

THREE weeks after the Long Island Lighting Company suffered millions of dollars in damage from Hurricane Gloria, the utility is being buffeted by new public dissatisfaction over the time it took the utility to restore power. Anger at Lilco's performance has spurred the following actions: * A group of Long Island residents that includes some of Lilco's most determined opponents has proposed a public takeover of the utility. * State and county officials have united in opposing any attempt by Lilco to recover through higher electric rates any portion of the estimated $40 million in damage and expenses caused to the utility by the storm. * The Democratic candidate for Nassau County Executive, John Matthews, has called for the ouster of Lilco's board of directors, and has found enthusiastic audiences for his anti-Lilco message. * The decision of Lilco's chairman, William J. Catacosinos, to remain on a European vacation after the hurricane knocked out service to 750,000 customers on Sept. 27 - in some cases for as long as two weeks - has won him the enmity of many public officials and Long Island residents.

An estimated 220,000 welfare recipients in New York State will be required to take a job or enter a job-training program beginning next month or have their benefits reduced, state officials said yesterday. The new requirement will apply to all participants in the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program who are judged employable. It will not apply to mothers with children under age 6, a group comprising 80 percent of the 1.1 million New York participants in the Federal and state program. The requirement will eventually be expanded to the 270,000 people who receive Home Relief, the state-local welfare program for individuals who do not qualify for Federal benefits. It will not apply to the 330,000 disabled, blind or elderly New Yorkers who receive Supplemental Security Income benefits.

President Reagan sent a conciliatory letter to Prime Minister Bettino Craxi today, marking a significant improvement in relations between Italy and the United States. After receiving the letter Mr. Craxi said he expected to attend next week's meeting of Western leaders in New York. Mr. Craxi, the caretaker Prime Minister whose Government collapsed earlier this week over disagreements on the handling of the Achille Lauro hijacking, made his announcement after meeting with the President's special envoy, John C. Whitehead, Deputy Secretary of State. Mr. Reagan's letter and Mr. Craxi's announcement were signs that the United States had moved rapidly to repair the split with Italy over the release of Mohammed Abbas, a Palestininan who the United States believes masterminded the hijacking. Formation of New Government According to Italian officials, Mr. Reagan decided to send Mr. Whitehead here after Mr. Craxi's office had let it be known that the Italian leader might not attend the New York meeting.

Orson Welles, 70, the greatest, most influential American film maker of his generation, died just 10 days ago, but already it's apparent that it won't be easy to get a fixed image of the man, especially from his own words as preserved in the clippings of the reference library of this large metropolitan newspaper. In 1972 he told a reporter that he was asking Peter Bogdanovich, the film maker, critic and friend, to hold up publication of a book Mr. Bogdanovich was doing on Welles's films, beginning with the seminal ''Citizen Kane'' (1941) and ''The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1942) and including everything up to and through ''Touch of Evil'' (1958), ''Chimes at Midnight'' (1966) and ''The Immortal Story'' (1968). He explained that he didn't want the Bogdanovich book to be just another ''looking back down memory lane'' volume, and had requested that Mr. Bogdanovich wait until the book could include sections on three new films due to come out ''next year.'' These were ''Question Mark,'' which did, in fact, come out the following year, titled ''F for Fake,'' as well as ''The Deep,'' a film he'd shot in Yugoslavia some time earlier with Jeanne Moreau and Laurence Harvey, but which still needed ''some second unit shooting,'' and ''The Other Side of the Wind,'' which, he said, was ''in the mixing stage.''

The earthquake and foreshock that hit the New York area yesterday originated about two miles west of Cameron's Line, which marks an abrupt change in the earth's crust that resulted from a collision between North America and a European-African land mass 400 million years ago. Geologists suspect that earthquakes in this region may in some way mark the release of strain accumulated in that collision and in subsequent stresses on the landscape. In particular the later splitting apart of the continents to form the Atlantic Ocean created great rift valleys along the East Coast, one of which crossed what is now Westchester County, the Hudson River at Tappan Zee and northern New Jersey. More recently - within the last 100,000 years - the region was heavily loaded with ice sheets, causing the crust to sink and then rebound after the ice melted. Whether these factors or more current activity within the earth set the stage for yesterday's quake and foreshock is uncertain.

IN a corner room at Public School 4 in Inwood, 22 kindergarteners - half of whom primarily spoke Spanish and half of whom knew only English - recently drew pictures showing how they had spent their summer vacations. With much prodding, they also described their illustrations in words. Sitting at a child-sized table, Karen Guerrero, a curly-haired youngster from El Salvador, held up a colorful sketch of the sun and several stick figures. After a lengthy conversation in Spanish with the child, Dr. Carmela Leonardi, co-ordinator of bilingual programs for the Lawrence Union Free School District, wrote on the child's paper, ''Fuimos a la playa. Nos banamos. Hay sol.'' On the line below, she wrote the translation: ''We went to the beach. We went in the water. It's sunny.'' Farther east, at Smithtown High School West, Penny Migliaccio began her lesson as she does every school day.

The ball was in the air. Then the kicker was in the air. Then the ball passed between the goalposts, and time ran out, and Iowa had beaten Michigan, 12-10. Suddenly, Rob Houghtlin found himself on the bottom of a rapidly expanding swarm of black and gold that swallowed the goalpost that helped make him famous. Houghtlin's 29-yard kick, his fourth field goal of the game gave the top-ranked Hawkeyes their sixth victory without a loss, their best start since 1960.

Auto Incentives: Part II? September's song is over for the auto industry - and August's, too. Just days after the interest-rate incentives of summer ended, auto sales began to sputter. Reports on the first 10 days of October show them down 10 percent compared with the 1984 period. And analysts expect worse days ahead, unless the industry restores seductive incentives to the showrooms.