Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Some People Might Do Less Internet For Lent...

Mardi Gras: for Lent some people might do less screen time and I would like to recommend a book.  Sara Paretsky, whose work was honored with the 2015 Paul Engel prize from Iowa, plans another publication this year.  I have been re-reading Breakdown (2012), in which Sara Paretsky discusses alternative truths in news, and in social behavior,  in the context of change to digital format in her Chicago's newspaper, the Star. 

Murray Ryerson, a supportive character in the V.I. Warshawski series, is an investigative reporter.  Digital change has reduced his prestige and his control over his content.  Alternative truth floods the airwaves from a source that was reliable print reporting and editorial content.  I wish to share a paragraph:

I found a meter around the corner from the Star's building on Kinzie and Canal.  One of Global's economizing measures had been to close down the Star's beaux arts building in the Loop and to move the reporting and editorial staff out to the press building along the Chicago River.  Given the four-hundred-million-dollar price tag for Global's corporate headquarters on Wacker, I suppose every penny saved on investigative journalism was essential; through my haze of anger I felt a brief twinge of sympathy for Murray, moved into this dingy building in the shadow of the rail yards and expressways.

The central character's series of interviews that begins with Murray Ryerson in his cubical (and does continue to Global's high rise new office) contrasts with an earlier scene at the apartment of the title (Breakdown) character.  In the disarray from Leydon Ashford's Bipolar illness, V.I. clears plates of food from rooms, clears perishables from the refrigerator, does the dishes, while she searches for clues.  Leydon was a college classmate who during a Bipolar relaspse fell from a balcony in a chapel.

Breakdown begins with an alternative truth:  V.I. Warshawski's search for thirteen-year-olds who are out after curfew progresses to their shared discovery of a dead body.  Before V.I. will connect with the police, she starts the group of girls away from the scene so that the police will not interview them until their parents are present. 
 
I am sure we share her belief that a separate truth in this way is appropriate, it is appropriate to show children a different emphasis because only years of time can allow them perspective on topics adults have to manage.

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