Beside him Mr. Harris folded his morning newspaper and held it out to Claude.
"Seen this yet?"
"No."
"Don't read it," Mr. Harris said, folding the paper once more and sliding it under his rear. "It will only upset you, son."
"It's a wicked paper... " Claude agreed, but Mr. Harris was overspeaking him.
"It's the big black words that do it. The little grey ones don't matter very much, they're just fill-ins they take everyday from the wires. They concentrate their poison in the big black words, where it will radiate.
Of course if you read the little stories too you've got sure proof that every word they wrote above, themselves, was a fat black lie, but by then you've absorbed a thousand greyer ones, and where and how to check on those? This way the mind deteriorates. The best way you can save yourself is not to read it, son."
"No, I... "
"That's right, if you're not careful," Mr. Harris went on, blue-eyed, red-faced, "you find yourself pretty soon hating everyone but God, the Babe, and a few dead senators. That's no fun. Men aren't so bad as that."
"No."
"That's right, you begin to worry about anyone who opens his mouth except to say ho it looks like rain, let's bowl. Otherwise you wonder what the hell he's trying to prove, or undermine. If he asks what time it is, you wonder what terrible thing is scheduled to happen, where it will happen, when. You can't even stand to be asked how you feel today - he's probably looking at the bumps on you, they may have grown more noticeable overnight. Soon you feel you should apologize for standing there where he can watch you dying in front of him, he'd rather for you to carry your head around in a little plaid bag, like your bowling ball. There's no joy in that. Men aren't so very bad."
Mr. Harris paused to remove his Panama hat. Water seeped from his knobby forehead, which he mopped with a damp handkerchief. "I've offended you, son," he said.
"Not at all, I entirely agree with you."
Mr. Harris replaced his hat, folded his handkerchief.
"I shouldn't shoot off this way," he said. "I read too much."
"No, no. You're right...
— Douglas Woolf
#media #newspaper #newspapers #men
