Newspapers

My Dear Sir,

I was most pleased & delighted today to find that you still have newspapers. After many hours of craning my neck over your shoulder, I had made the brash assumption that crisp, real newsprint had been eschewed in favor of those glowing panels of moving, flashing type into which you constantly stare.

It seems to me that you are, all of you, chained to your desks by the allure of these tyrants, and it need not be so. In my day, a bright spring morning would bid me, and I, the master of my morning gazette, would tuck the bundle neatly under my arm & charge out into the light. An empty bench would wave me over, & I would spend hours enjoying delicious lie upon lie while the sun warmed me. If one is determined to consume rubbish it must be done in the full light of day where its deceits are evident.

The contraption in which I found myself this morning was some sort of engine-less train. I could just make out at the far end of the crowded cabin a businessman poring over a newspaper, golden sunlight streaming in through the cabin window and across the text as the car rattled along. I tell you, the sensation of nostalgia quite nearly overpowered me. I made my way over to his seat, sat down by him, rested my head on his shoulder (one of the privileges of the insubstantial), and shared the read. It was glorious, and I am gratified to report to you that the content was in every way equal to the finest papers of my day. Swindles, slanders, calamities, atrocities – all were there in plenty and splendidly adorned in the exact measure of anonymity that I required so as to remain blissfully free of any human response that might threaten to bring ruination to my entertainment. By the time the train stopped I felt full and satisfied, marveling at the power of an art form fully perfected.

The raw intellectual apathy the typical American could bring to bear against the threat of improving the world — after even just a few doses of this heady elixir — is surely beyond measure. Sometime later on I must find a means for you to explain to me why so many people of your time choose instead to be misinformed by a clicking, whirring, infernal machine. I did note, though, in watching you carry on with yours, that there are more pictures than one might encounter in newsprint, that many of them are printed in full color, and that some are even cinemascopic. I have always considered the human imagination to be far more alluring than someone else’s provided image, but am now willing, due to the preponderance of evidence, to concede that I may have been mistaken.

Yours,

MT