Newspapers

A few days ago I finished The Pelican Brief by John Grisham. I had picked it up because I heard someone mention it as being a book she reread every so often because she enjoyed it. I had never read anything by Grisham, so it seemed like a good summer pick. 

It was okay. I finished it and the second half felt engaging enough that I finished it quickly, but I'm not sure it's aged well. Social mores change and the whole 50+ year old male law professor having the affair with the 24 year old female law student felt icky. It pretty much ruined the book for me. It was published in 1992, which meant it was probably written about the same time I was just out of college. I am fully aware that there were teacher student relationships, but while it didn't quite reach the point of being scandalous, it was also not quite right, either. And for the author to be male and writing about it... Just ick. 

There was something else that struck me when I had finished the book. Much of the plot involved a Washington Post [remember when the Post actually cared about truth?] reporter trying to get the real story about the assassinations which occur at the beginning of the book. At the end, when he has his story which then goes to print, much of the last bit was describing the reactions of people reading the article in that morning's edition. I realized as I read this that I was feeling a deep loss of not having a daily paper and the rituals which went with it. 

Who else drank their coffee every morning while reading through the paper? I can even remember the order in which I would do it: Headlines first, of course, but it was hard to stay there immediately because there was not enough coffee in me yet. So I would immediately flip to the back of the paper and read the comics and advice columns. That was easier to handle uncaffeinated. Then I would flip back to the front page and actually read the articles, move onto the editorials, and finish up with whichever lifestyle section appeared that day. I would finish by working on the crossword. 

And then papers started getting thinner and more expensive at the same time. Whole sections had disappeared from the Sunday paper. I deeply missed the books section. And then there was the fateful day that I cancelled the paper. It was a shadow of its former self and we couldn't justify the much higher subscription rates. It felt wrong, but we lived pretty close to the bone and didn't really have a choice. 

I miss getting a daily paper. Yes, I know I could still have one delivered, but once again, I'm not sure I could justify the cost. We seem to have gained the world in terms of news, but I think we have probably lost far more than we have gained.