Sticking to the story:

...asked my 1% 0 N THE DAY the news reported couldn't do...

...They tell us a commonplace seeing the world which not only deter- certain number of types, every one of and reassuring thing: it isn't all glory in mines the format of news programs but which corresponds, more or less, to a this land of fame and big money-we get even determines what will be considered literary motif...

...The park was names...

...I thought of Aldous the need for a fulltime guard to keep the Across the way were two white men and Huxley's book, The Doors of Percep- bums out...

...He was patient waiting, maybe with help...

...This is a purpose even by the most subtle conspiracy ning around with guns, and official of myth: it offers an objective way to see theorist in the world...

...We nearly lost they drunk...

...happened was that the story grew dull...

...They were were any place in America more per- been quite a lot of argument about it...

...At the same tion they attract, though they have hardly afford to take too long in the telling...

...it forms a world of his family, the unfortunate prince to takes into account the ragged and confus- for us by selection and elimination...

...But I don't tween mystical and drug-induced experi- thing they want is another place for the think it was beer which explained their ences...

...At the supermarkets, or muddled middles, don't get told be- tures it in simple and fixed figures...

...is called "the news" and the people we been quietly cleaned up...

...It was croaking...

...demic...

...An example: do you remember time-so close to the language of police Pluto's orbit-that Jerry Brown could be the year ecology was a new word, and reports and the Watergate' people, who a contender for the brass ring in 1980...

...The beer and the wine were suggestions have been made for its use as Even playing with my kids I begin to get just for wetting the whistle...

...drawn out, as if in slow motion...

...I can't understand why these ac- methadone, heroin, marijuana, LSD, money anyway...

...the last tles in brown paper bags...

...It used to be called the House explained to me why the whites of the fights, urinate,akainst the sides of trees...

...None of them had any Of several minds: John Garvey teeth-I'd guess they were in their late thirties, but it was hard to tell-and they were grinning, lips wet, eyes half closed, failing into each other's arms and then STICKING TO THE STORY pulling back again, making croaking sounds...

...What really There is no alternative to having the think of as "newsmakers...

...Some find is a good story...

...Even on the coldest as mechanic in a small town and moved, They're afraid to operate now...

...At the ington Square often have yellow eyes crush is not to be believed...

...They have nights of winter there are usually a couple with his family, to be near the hospital to treat it with radiation...

...He came at me full force...

...The kings of the time are reduced to a comedies...

...A friend told moment it is filled with blooming daftoo...

...news has stars and serial stories every bit crime-the situation is already a pretty But the juxtaposition of the two things as much as "entertainment programm- formal one-and the hit man knew he on the same day, the meeting and the ing" does...

...The park is very well mainprotein deficiency...

...We learn that as the tabloids try to bring the gods down mind of the people political questions are there is some of what we suffer in the to us, they do so in a way which looks reduced to stories of adventure...

...he knew that now his work seven-year-old daughter, Susan...

...At this answers are obvious: there is an outside This is understandable, but it can be time I shot him with a .38...

...It stands on THOMAS POWERS woman was wearing a brief halter, bare in the middle...

...Nor is the tragic situation the real world, the news, is as structured his former wife, model Glenna Bandana...

...Various around Washington Square Parkall day...

...Even whom his servants remain faithful...

...Quaaludes...

...There is all the overt drama of the booze, the women...

...The Why do we consider some people and strange it is that what a reporter wants to arrow from the spear gun deflected off events more important than others...

...There's strange, fluid, weaving gait...

...of the man I met to be laid in any way at and formal and limited as the situation `It was all those hard nights on the road, the feet of California governor Jerry comedy...

...I am not the first person to point out how saw the blood around his heart...

...The blacks in Wash- NYU turn away...

...Other stories, ernment had already assumed rather sorts of living and half-living and dead which suffer from confusing beginnings complicated forms, the popular mind picfamous folk...

...He was living of people standing around, stamping where his twelve-year-old son was being at a limit, having to trust a set of people their feet, collars up, drinking beer or treated for a brain tumor...

...The weekly...

...We were At the center of his life was this When the weather is good they're pan- going to get it started again with jump heartbreaking, perhaps hopeless thing...

...lives of people we are used to seeing in curiously neat, with a place for every- JOHN GARVEY Common weal: 300...

...The grass is so lush, deep and ride ten-speed French racing bikes, carry standing room only and evey drug known vibrant it seems almost incandescent...

...In the meantime it's a complished young men want to hang barbiturates, amphetamine, angel dust, park, or at least a green place...

...We have Ban-Ion, we have lanernments and the lives of people who tergent build-up in streams, the effect of guage right out of the pulps ("He came at lead them affect us all...

...But it is important to more real than we are-from them we ing people, and so, despite the fact that keep in mind the extremely limited and will find out something which our own the danger and the waste have continued, formal view of the world it gives us...

...if it television broadcast the testimony of a startled deer...

...We think of Jimmy the stories died...

...I'll never do it Linda Ronstadt" whatever fun they are The one sort of television program again,' country-rock star Billy Mustang having-I have often wanted to go to which has a unique claim to representing said after he was convicted of beating up Africa myself...

...So constantly moving, almost as if they fectly integrated than Washington the Jefferson Market park is surrounded were dancing, but their knees were bent Square Park on a midsummer's night...

...news...

...They vomit in the bushes, stagger cables, and if that didn't work we would At the edge of the family "they" were along the paths, stretch out on the have to get it towed...

...Their skin was as white as the belly of a toad...

...At this chance-at this point about as outside as insidious...

...He knew what he I certainly don't begrudge the people 25 May 1979: 299 described in all the stories as "California situations which have neat beginnings, thing, everything in its place, and everygovernor Jerry Brown and rock star middles and ends...

...But some of the blacks have went for a look...

...This is reassuring, because it tells us about the world...

...thing explainable...

...I am sure "He had a white Ban-Ion shirt on and I why do we pay attention to them at all...

...One walk around the The city owns the park and plans to build chess at the chess tables in the southwest fountain, which took quite a while, something on it eventually...

...What's the matter with those people...

...He had no who all became "they" in conversation...

...still, it can't be easy to does not, this is the result of some failure hit-man who was appearing before a know that you are thought of as Zen Ken at another point in the story line...

...dren...

...money and his car was stalled...

...colony in Africa (apparently they never bleeding," he said...

...From the me full force"), and we have the camera reasonable explanations don't quite lack of recent news-attention to such watching everything: in short, we have a cover all the reasons we care about what things you would think that all of that had little story...

...The committee investigating organized and Malibu Barby...

...or addicts in the park...

...It got in the way Brown and rock star Linda Ronstadt, not film footage showing fires, people run- of my family life...

...On summer nights the tained by a voluntary committee...

...In a sense they pomp...

...wine out of bottles in brown paper bags...

...It wasn't talking and it wasn't...

...In the ing aspects of ordinary life...

...But the ordinary the dyes used in paper, etc...

...The two There's a new park behind the Jeffermen had taken their shirts off and the son Market Public Library...

...Last year been known to flee from attention, like every crisis must have a resolution...

...Local residents are unhappy a white woman drinking beer out of bot- tion, about the interesting similarities be- enough as it is with Eighth Street...

...Are rumors that Jerry Brown and Linda was a terrible waiting...

...One was to make it accessible restless after an hour...

...I go away in the summer...

...their bottles on the pavement, crunch up the site of the old Women's Hotte of An old German doctor in Africa once their beer cans, beg for quarters, get into Detention...

...It is lives won't tell us...

...So far the corner of the park, do dazzling maneuv- weaving our way through the mob, planners haven't been able to decide ers on hundred-dollar skateboards, read brought a dozen offers of cocaine, what and they probably haven't got any Kant...

...I tried to explain but she Ronstadt were heading for a nudist him once seven years ago, from the looked as if I wasn't making any sense...

...There is the wise and just cancer too, we too are misunderstood, news in the first place...

...In The Waning of the sis, William Faulkner, Pope John XXIII, crime...

...from the library...

...They thought they There's nothing unusual about drunks got there) I met a man who had left his job had all the tumor then, but they didn't...

...we do need to know about many of We think of some people and events as You couldn't keep telling it without bor- the stories it tells...

...by a twelve-foot-high cyclone fence and and their motions and gestures were all the gate is kept padlocked...

...benches snoring loudly...

...expensive tape decks, play excellent to man was for sale...

...but there are also the less clearly ourselves in other flesh, other situations, could even be seen as victims of the atten- stated terms of any narrative: no story can maybe making life clearer...

...of D. I don't know where the women's eyes of local blacks were often yellow: The nannies and the college girls from jail is now...

...The problem with both plans was eat in the serious manner of children...

...tabloids with lots of ink on the cause they can't make it into a form current political ideas are those of the Old cover feature stories about the which now largely determines the way Testament, of the romaunt and the balheartbreaks faced by stars of situation we think of things, a structured way of lad...

...Mexican brown...

...dered through but made no arrests...

...I remember wondering if there bums and the drunks to hang out...

...prince, the prince deceived by evil counour husbands and wives and lovers also The news keeps the world from us as it selors, the prince who avenges the honor leave us...

...AND THAT'S THE WAY IT ISN'T laughing...

...his rib...

...there were stories about the dangers we continually spoke of "this point in And of course the fall and rise of gov- faced from phosphates in the water, de- time...

...They smash nearly beyond belief...

...This is how he talked: stories from Africa, made me wonder: are competing for our attention...

...of which I can never remember the eyes like hawks, are smartly dressed, I'd never seen it before...

...It gives them a kind of bleary, unfo- me what it was like and after dinner we fodils and tulips and a lot of other flowers cused look...

...Ted Kennedy andSupertrain was on television...

...Cops wan- a real park...

...Boring people is consid- not at all true to say that what we see there Carter that way, as well as Jackie Onas ered, if not a capital, at least a capitalist is the real world...

...time it can act as a shield...

...This story didn't have a neat end- Middle Ages J. Huizinga writes, "Aland the late and spectacularly un- ing, it looked as if it would go on and on, though in reality the mechanism of govlamented Nelson Rockefeller, and all and so it was dropped...

...another was to reserve it A week or so ago I bought them Good "Loose joints," the black kids said, for mothers or nannies with small chilHumors and they sat down on a bench to flashing something in the palm of a hand...