Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 3
IDROVEON,withouttheradioofmuchinthewayofthoughts,toMountPleasant,whereI
stopped for coffee. I had the Sunday New York Times with me-one of the greatest improve-
ments in life since I had been away was that you could now buy the New York Times out of
machinesonthedayofpublicationinaplacelikeIowa,anextraordinaryfeatofdistribution-
and I spread out with it in a booth. Boy, do I love the Sunday New York Times. Apart from
its many virtues as a newspaper, there is just something wonderfully reassuring about its
very bulk. The issue in front of me must have weighed ten or twelve pounds. It could've
stoppedabulletattwentyyards.Ireadoncethatittakes75,000treestoproduceoneissueof
the Sunday New York Times-and it's well worth every trembling leaf. So what if our grand-
children have no oxygen to breathe? Fuck 'em.
My favorite parts of the Times are the peripheral bits-the parts that are so dull and obscure
that they exert a kind of hypnotic fascination, like the home improvements column (“All
You Need to Know About Fixings and Fastenings”) and the stamps column (“Post Office
Marks 25 Years of Aeronautic Issues”). Above all, I love the advertising supplements. If a
Bulgarian asked me what life was like in America, I would without hesitation tell him to get
ahold of a stack of New York Times advertising supplements. They show a life of richness
and variety beyond the wildest dreams of most foreigners. As if to illustrate my point, the
issue before me contained a gift catalog from the Zwingle Company of New York offering
scores of products of the things-younever-knew-you-needed variety-musical shoe trees, an
umbrella with a transistor radio in the handle, an electric nail buffer. What a great country!
My favorite was a small electric hot plate you could put on your desk to keep your coffee
from going cold. This must be a real boon to people with brain damage, the sort of injuries
that lead them to wander off and neglect their beverages. Really, who buys these things-sil-
ver toothpicks and monogrammed underpants and mirrors that Say MAN OF THE YEAR
on them? I have often thought that if I ran one of these companies I would produce a pol-
ished mahogany plaque with a brass plate on it saying, HEY, HOW ABOUT ME? I PAID
$22.95 FOR THIS COMPLETELY USELESS PIECE OF CRAP. I'm certain they would
sell like hotcakes.
Once in a deranged moment I bought something myself from one of these catalogs knowing
deepinmymindthatitwouldendinheartbreak. Itwasalittle readinglightthatyouclipped
ontoyourbooksoasnottodisturbyourbedmateassheslumberedbesideyou.Inthisrespect
it was outstanding because it barely worked. The light it cast was absurdly feeble (in the
catalog it looked like the sort of thing you could signal ships with if you got lost at sea) and
left all but the first two lines of a page in darkness. I have seen more luminous insects. After
