And Now the News by Theodore Sturgeon

believe that?”
    â€œI most certainly did! Just picture it: you come to me here all covered with bruises and guilt, suicidal, cowed, and without any realizable ambition. I tell you all you need to do is stand up straight and spit in their eye. How much good would that have done you?”
    Joe laughed shakily. “I feel like one of those characters in the old animated cartoons. They’d walk off the edge of a cliff and hang there in midair, and there they’d stay, grinning and twirling their canes, until they looked down. Then—boom!” He tried another laugh, and failed with it. “I just looked down,” he said hoarsely.
    â€œYou’ve got it a little backwards,” said Zeitgeist. “Remember how you looked forward to graduating—to the time when you could discard that monkey-puzzle and stand on your own feet? Well, son, you just made it. Come on; this calls for a drink!”
    Joe jammed his arms into his jacket. “Thanks, but I just found out I can talk to my wife.”
    They started up the hall. “What do you do this for, Zeitgeist?”
    â€œIt’s a living.”
    â€œIs that streamlined mousetrap out there the only bait you use?”
    Zeitgeist smiled and shook his head.
    For the second time in fifteen minutes Joe said, “I guess I just don’t understand you,” but there was a world of difference. Suddenly he broke away from the old man and went into the room with the fireplace. He came back, jamming the envelope into his pocket. “I can handle this,” he said. He went out.
    Zeitgeist leaned in the doorway, watching him go. He’d have offered him a ride, but he wanted to see him walk like that, with his head up.

New York Vignette
    JOHN: We wanted to tell you a story this morning … a New York story but something special … something different and so we asked a special, different sort of writer to send us one. His name is Theodore Sturgeon … and he’s the winner of the International Fantasy Award for the best science fiction novel of 1954—a beautiful and enchanted novel called … “MORE THAN HUMAN.” In just a few days, you’ll be able to see Ted’s award, a gleaming chromium spaceship, in the window of Brentano’s Fifth Avenue shop. We’re really not altogether certain whether Ted’s written us a story or not … but I’ll read you his letter. It begins—Dear “PULSE”:
    MUSIC: OPENING CURTAIN … NICE, NORMAL … BRIGHT. UNDER FOR:
    JOHN: When I got your note, I was delighted at the idea of doing a story for you. I went straight to the typewriter, unwound the typewriter ribbon from the neck and ears of my baby daughter, Tandy, sat down on my son Robin’s plastic automobile, got up again, picked the pieces of plastic out of myself and the chair, dried Robin’s tears, handed Tandy to her mother for a bath, rewound the ribbon, put some paper in the machine, and nothing happened. You see, what you did is ask for a story at one of those times when a writer can’t write and nothing can make him write. I tried, honestly I did. I played all the tricks on myself I ever learned. I drank two cups of strong, black coffee, I did some knee-bends, I filed my nails, read the morning paper all the way through, ate a stale bagel and a handful of raisins, sniffed at a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia to clear my head, and lit my pipe. I don’t like a pipe but it makes me feel like an author. I even had a small quarrel with my wife, which sometimesworks wonders. Still no story.
    There was nothing for it but to go out and wander. They say New York has something for everyone—you just have to know where to look. I went looking first on Rockefeller Plaza, which never fails to do something to me. I hung over the rail and watched the skaters moving like moths and mayflies to music that came from nowhere,