How does he read the Times?
He reads it the way Americans have always read the paper. He also reads it as few Americans have ever read the paper—with nostrils sensitive, dilating with proud scorn, sniffing for the news behind the news.
He loves it—even loves the Times—loves Love unlovable—and don’t we all? Ink-fresh papers, millions of them—ink-fresh with morning, orange juice, waffles, eggs and bacon, and cups of strong hot coffee. How fine it is, here in America, at ink-fresh, coffee-fragrant morning, to read the paper!
How often have we read the paper in America! How often have we seen it blocked against our doors! Little route-boys fold and block it, so to throw it—and so we find it and unfold it, crackling and ink-laden, at our doors. Sometimes we find it tossed there lightly with flat plop; sometimes we find it thrown with solid, whizzing whack against the clapboards (clapboards here, most often, in America); sometimes, as now in Turtle Bay, servants find just freshly folded sheets laid neatly down in doorways, and take them to the table for their masters. No matter how it got there, we always find it.
How we do love the paper in America! How we do love the paper, all!
Why do we love the paper in America? Why do we love the paper, all?
Mad masters, I will tell ye why.
Because the paper is “the news” here in America, and we love the smell of news. We love the smell of news that’s “fit to print”. We also love the smell of news not fit to print. We love, besides, the smell of facts that news is made of. Therefore we love the paper because the news is so fit-printable—so unprintable—and so fact-printable.
Is the news, then, like America? No, it’s not—and Fox, unlike the rest of you, mad masters, turns the pages knowing it is just the news and not America that he reads there in his Times.
The news is not America, nor is America the news—the news is in America. It is a kind of light at morning, and at evening, and at midnight in America. It is a kind of growth and record and excrescence of our life. It is not good enough—it does not tell our story—yet it is the news!
Fox reads (proud nose sharp-sniffing with a scornful relish):
An unidentified man fell or jumped yesterday at noon from the twelfth storey of the Admiral Francis Drake Hotel, corner of Hay and Apple Streets, in Brooklyn. The man, who was about thirty-five years old, registered at the hotel about a week ago, according to the police, as C. Green. Police are of the opinion that this was an assumed name. Pending identification, the body is being held at the King’s County Morgue.
This, then, is news. Is it also the whole story, Admiral Drake? No! Yet we do not supply the whole story—we who have known all the lights and weathers of America—as Fox supplies it now:
Well, then, it’s news, and it happened in your own hotel, brave Admiral Drake. It didn’t happen in the Penn-Pitt at Pittsburgh, nor the Phil-Penn at Philadelphia, nor the York-Albany at Albany, nor the Hudson-Troy at Troy, nor the Libya-Ritz at Libya Hill, nor the Clay-Calhoun at Columbia, nor the Richmond-Lee at Richmond, nor the George Washington at Easton, Pennsylvania, Canton, Ohio, Terre Haute, Indiana, Danville, Virginia, Houston, Texas, and ninety-seven other places; nor at the Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, Wilmington, Delaware, Cairo, Illinois, Kansas City, Missouri, Los Angeles, California, and one hundred and thirty-six other towns; nor at the Andrew Jackson, the Roosevelt (Theodore or Franklin—take your choice), the Jefferson Davis, the Daniel Webster, the Stonewall Jackson, the U.S. Grant, the Commodore Vanderbilt, the Waldorf-Astor, the Adams House, the Parker House, the Palmer House, the Taft, the McKinley, the Emerson (Waldo or Bromo), the Harding, the Coolidge, the Hoover, the Albert G. Fall, the Harry Daugherty, the Rockefeller, the Harriman, the Carnegie or the Frick, the Christopher Columbus or the Leif Ericsson, the Ponce-de-Leon or the Magellan, in the remaining eight hundred and forty-three cities of America—but at the Francis Drake, brave Admiral—your own hotel—so, of course, you’ll want to know what happened.