B. were strong enough to help the old lady

Unit 2 Print Media

Part1 Newspapers

· Are newspapers read in your family? What source of information is the most popular among your parents? Your grandparents? Do you and your friends read newspapers? Why? Why not?

· Look at the pictures. What do they illustrate?

· Do you think that today newspapers are as popular and important as they used to be in the 18, 19, and 20 centuries? Will newspapers be popular in the 21 century? Justify your viewpoint.

Reading 1

· Skim the essay by Michael Kinsley, an American political journalist, commentator, and television host, to find the main idea of it.

· How would you headline the essay?

Somewhere in the forest, a tree is cut down. It is loaded onto a giant truck and hauled a vast distance to a factory, where the trees are turned into huge rolls of paper. These rolls are loaded onto another truck and hauled another vast distance to another factory, where the rolls of paper are covered in ink, chopped up, folded, stacked, tied, and loaded onto a third set of trucks, which fan out across cities and regions dropping bundles here and there.

Printing plants no longer have the clickety-clack of linotype machines and bubbling vats of molten lead. The letterpress machines that stamped the ink on the paper have been supplanted by offset presses that transfer it gently. There is computer-controlled this and that. Nevertheless, the process remains highly physical, mechanical, complicated, and noisy. As we live through the second industrial revolution, your daily newspaper remains a tribute to the wonders of the first one.

Meanwhile, back to those bundles. Some of them are opened and the newspapers are put, one-by-one, into plastic bags. They are loaded onto a fourth set of vehicles—bicycles by legend, usually these days a car or small truck—and flung individually into your bushes or at your cat. Other bundles go to retail establishments. Still other newspapers are locked into attractive metal boxes bolted into the sidewalk. Anyone who is feeling lucky and happens to possess the exact change has a decent shot at obtaining a paper or, for the same price, carting away a dozen.

What happens next? The proud owner of up to four or five pounds of paper and ink begins searching for the parts he or she wants. The paper has multiple sections, each of which is either folded into others or wrapped around others according to an ancient formula known only to newspaper publishers and designed to guarantee that no one section can either be found on the first go-through or removed without putting half a dozen other sections into play.

And so, at last, there are two piles of paper: a short one of stuff to read, and a tall one of stuff to throw away. Unfortunately, many people are taking the logic of this process one step further. Instead of buying a paper in order to throw most of it away, they are not buying it in the first place.

Bill Gates says that in technology things that are supposed to happen in less than five years usually take longer than expected, while things that are supposed to happen in more than 10 years usually come sooner than expected. Ten years ago, when I went to work for Microsoft, the newspaper industry was in a panic over something called Sidewalk—a now-forgotten Microsoft project to create Web site entertainment guides for a couple dozen big cities. Newspapers were convinced that Microsoft could and would put them out of business by stealing their ad base. It didn't happen. The collapse of the Internet bubble did happen. And, until very recently, the newspapers got complacent. Some developed good Web sites, some didn't, but most stopped thinking of the Web as an imminent danger.

Ten years later, newspapers are starting to panic again.

The trouble even an established customer will take to obtain a newspaper continues to shrink. Once, I would drive across town if necessary. Today, I open the front door and if the paper isn't within about 10 feet I retreat to my computer and read it online. Only six months ago, that figure was 20 feet. Soon they will have to bring it to me in bed and read it to me out loud…

No one knows how all this will play out. But it is hard to believe that there will be room in the economy for delivering news by the Rube Goldberg* process described above. That doesn't mean newspapers are toast. After all, they've got the brand names. You gotta trust something called the "Post-Intelligencer" more than something called "Yahoo!" or "Google," don't you? No, seriously, don't you? OK, how old did you say you are?

There is even hope for newspapers in the very absurdity of their current methods of production and distribution. What customers pay for a newspaper doesn't cover the cost of the paper, let alone the attendant folderol. Without these costs, even zero revenue from customers would be a good deal for newspapers, if advertisers go along. Which they might. Maybe. Don't you think? Please?

* Rube Goldberg – a common adjective, used to describe something ingeniously or unnecessarily complicated in design or construction (e.g. a Rube Goldberg machine). Rube Goldberg (1883-1970), an American cartoonist whose illustrations often depicted devices with such a complicated design

· Read the text and answer the following questions:

1. What words and expressions does Michael Kinsley use to describe the process of making a newspaper? Do these words and expressions reflect his attitude to newspapers?

2. In the highlighted sentence from the second passage Michael Kinsley mentions ‘the wonders of the first industrial revolution’. Can you name any of these wonders? Can you list the wonders of ‘the second industrial revolution’? Are any of them connected with mass media?

3. How does the author describe the process of reading a newspaper? What, from his point of view, is the most irritating thing about it?

4. What do we learn about the Sidewalk project? What for does the author tell us about it?

5. What do we learn about the availability of newspapers? How available a newspaper should be to win the competition with the Internet?

6. What do you think can the word toast mean in the context of the article?

· Focus on vocabulary

ü Fill in the gaps in the sentences with the words from the text.

1. If we can get some strong ropes or wires around the sunken boat, we might be able to ______her up.

2. The tree is too big, you'll have to ______back some of the branches.

3. They ______out from the farmhouse in twos and threes, and soon the place was empty.

4. A _____ is a large barrel or tank in which liquids can be stored.

5. Marx believed that socialist society would eventually ________capitalism.

6. He gathered the _______ of books into his arms and left the room.

7. _________stores usually count on the Christmas season to make up to half of their annual profits.

8. He is such a ________ person! He is pleased with himself and feels that he does not need to do anything about the situation, even though the situation is uncertain and dangerous.

9. If you say that something is__________, especially something unpleasant, you mean it is almost certain to happen very soon.

· Sharing the ideas.

ü Is the author optimistic or pessimistic about the future of newspapers? What makes you think so?

ü Do you share the author’s viewpoint? Why? Why not?

ü Imagine you are an owner (a chief editor) of a big newspaper. Hold a meeting with your staff. Work out a plan how to make your newspaper popular in the Internet age.

Hitting the headlines

· Why are headlines important? What qualities should a headline possess to attract your attention?

· Read the dialog in the box.

How to write them Publisher: It's finding the center of your story, the beating heart of it, that's what makes a reporter. You have to start by making up some headlines. You know: short, punchy, dramatic headlines. Now, have a look, [pointing at dark clouds gathering in the sky over the ocean] what do you see? Tell me the headline. Journalist: HORIZON FILLS WITH DARK CLOUDS? Publisher: IMMINENT STORM THREATENS VILLAGE. Journalist: But what if no storm comes? Publisher: VILLAGE SPARED FROM DEADLY STORM. (a dialog from the film The Shipping News)

· Read the headlines from the first column. Guess what sort of article could be headlined like that. Would it be a news item? A feature? What would this article be about?

· Study the second column of the box. Match the headline from the right column to the gist of the story in the left column.

Airline: 3 detained in Detroit after flight	NEW YORK (AP) — An exotic antelope has briefly tasted freedom after escaping its enclosure at a New York City zoo. The kudu, a species of African antelope, was spotted by a photographer Sunday. The photographer, Andrew Lichtenstein, tells the Daily News that the animal was sticking to an area of shrubs and trees at the zoo near where people would be walking.
Actor sentenced to life in prison for gang rape	Police detained and questioned three passengers at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport on Sunday after the crew of the Frontier Airlines flight from Denver reported suspicious activity on board, and two F-16 jets shadowed the flight until it landed safely, airline and federal officials said.
Ohio woman hauls trash to mayor's office	A bit actor was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the violent 1990 gang rape of a Southern California woman.
Happy Feet the penguin missing in Southern Ocean	An Ohio woman frustrated by the mix-up of the trash pick-up schedule after the Labor Day holiday decided to haul her own garbage — right into her mayor's office.
Woman bites elderly man in "vampire" attack	Scientists tracking Happy Feet, the wayward penguin who became a worldwide celebrity after washing up on a New Zealand beach, said Monday they had lost contact with the giant bird.
African antelope briefly tastes freedom at US zoo	ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida woman who allegedly claimed to be a vampire has been charged with battery after violently biting a man in a wheelchair on his face and arms, police said on Friday.

· Did you have any difficulty reading and understanding the headlines? Analyze the headlines from the first column from grammatical point of view. What are the distinctive features of the headlines?

· Study the content of the box below. Learn the necessary vocabulary.

Most medium-sized or larger newspapers have separate sections (and usually separate editors and reporting staffs) for national/world news, local news, business news, sports, lifestyle (features) news, and arts/entertainment news. Larger papers may also have sections that cover state news, books, theater, science, politics, etc. As for department of newspapers, most newspapers have the following, though they are organized a little differently everywhere: Newsroom – responsible for news gathering, writing, editing and layout of pages with news content on them; usually responsible for most of the paper's Web site, too. Editorial – responsible for the editorial page of the paper, including the paper's editorial stance on issues, editorial cartoonists (if there are any on staff), and columnists Advertising – sells advertising, designs ads, generally does the initial layout of the paper, putting ads on pages and then sending them to the newsroom to be filled with news content; often the ad department is split into display advertising (like the big box ads in the paper) and classified advertising. Nowadays, there are also separate online advertising departments. Production – responsible for plating and printing the newspaper Circulation – responsible for selling and delivering the paper; circulation departments often have some people responsible for home delivery subscribers and others responsible for single-copy sales (like the papers available at newspaper boxes or in convenience stores) Information technology/services – Computer/networking support; there is often a separate IT staff that just handles newsroom systems. Marketing/promotions – Responsible for designing advertising for the newspaper and negotiating with community groups to sponsor different community events. Many newspapers also plan and put on their own events, too, such as bridal fairs or home shows.

Reading 2

· Before you read

ü Wikipedia gives the following definition of Yellow Journalism:

“Yellow journalism , or the yellow press, is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion”.

ü Are there any ‘yellow’ papers you can name?

Eddie Clontz

Bat Child Found in Cave.

The relationship between truth and reporting has always been a tricky one. No scene remains undistorted as it passes the eye of the beholder, and none reaches the page exactly as it was. But while living with this discrepancy, many journalists struggle with a much baser temptation. What they really want to put into their copy is that extraordinary “fact”, that jaw-dropping story retailed by a single source down a cracking telephone line, which would earn them a banner headline if they could only stand it up.

Eddie Clontz felt this more than most, and he never resisted the temptation. As the deviser and, for 20 years, he editor-in-chief of Weekly World News, his delight was to run the wildest stories he could find. He described himself not as an editor but as a circus-master, drawing readers into his tent with an endless parade of fantasies and freaks.

The News had, and has, an unassuming look, a black-and-white tabloid with blurry graphics that sits at supermarket checkouts across America, among the chewing gum. But its headlines, in inch-high sans serif, are another matter. “Archeologists Find Middle Earth in New Jersey Swamp!” “Seven Congressmen Are Zombies!” “Tiny Terrorists Disguised as Garden Gnomes!” (“These guys are typical al-Qaeda operatives,’ says a top CIA source, ‘with beards down to their belt buckles’.”) Such stories, all from one recent issue, would have made Mr Clontz proud.

The News for which he was hired, in 1981, was a sorry affair, a dumping ground for stories that failed to make the National Enquirer. It had been started mostly to make use of the Enquirer’s old black-and-white presses after the sister-tabloid had gone to color. Mr Clontz shook it up. Out went the tired celebrity gossip; in came space aliens, dinosaurs, giant vegetables, and a “Psychic” column in which his brother Derek would find readers’ car keys. Circulation soared. In a good week, it can reach well over a million.

Two stories in particular got Mr Clontz noticed. In 1988, his organ revealed that “Elvis is alive! (King of Rock ’n’ Roll Faked his Death and is Living in Kalamazoo, Michigan!)”. A few years later, the News reported that a bat boy, with huge ears and amber eyes and “eating his own weight in insects each single day”, had been found by scientists in a cave in West Virginia.

Both items were followed up for years. Elvis went on appearing; Bat Boy escaped, was recaptured by the FBI, fell in love and endorsed Al Gore for president. Readers wrote in with their own sightings, bolstering whatever truth the nation believed was there. In 1993, Mr Clontz dared to kill the resurrected Elvis (“Elvis Dead at 58!”) – only to reveal some time later that his death, too, had been a hoax.

Sheer chance seemed to bring Mr Clontz to this strange outpost of journalism. After dropping out of school at 16 and trying his luck as a scallop fisherman, he became a copy boy on his local paper in North Carolina. He moved next to a Florida paper, and from there to the disreputable corner office in the Enquirer building, in a run-down resort near Palm Beach, from which he was to entertain and terrify America.

His own politics were mysterious. Under the pseudonym “Ed Anger”, he wrote a News column so right-wing that it possibly came from the left. Anger hated foreigners, yoga, whales, speed limits and pineapple on pizza; he liked flogging, electrocutions and beer. No, Mr Clontz would say, he had no idea who Anger really was. But he was “about as close to him as any human being.”

Mr Clontz also always denied that his staff made the stories up. It was subtler than that. Many tips came from “freelance correspondents” who called in; their stories were “checked”, but never past the point where they might disintegrate. (“We don’t know whether stories are true,” said Mr Clontz, “and we really don’t care.”) The staff also read dozens of respectable newspapers and magazines, antennae alert for the daft and the bizarre. When a nugget was found, Mr Clontz would order them to greater imaginative heights by squirting them with a giant water-pistol.

Yet he also showed care for authenticity. If a story resisted tracking down, he would give it the dateline “Bolivia”. If it relied on “scientific research”, he would make sure the scientists were Bulgarian. Writers who made up the names of Georgia natives terrorized by giant chickens would be asked to check in the telephone book to make sure they did not exist. Loving editorial attention was given to the face of Satan when he appeared in a cloud formation over New York.

The result of this was that many readers appeared to believe Mr Clontz’s stories. Letters poured in, especially from the conservative and rural parts of the country where Ed Anger’s columns struck a chord. If a sensible man like Anger kept company with aliens and 20-pound cucumbers, perhaps those stories too were true. When the News reported the discovery of a hive of baby ghosts, more than a thousand readers wrote in to adopt one. But the saddest tale was of the soldier who wrote, in all seriousness, offering marriage to the two-headed woman.

The Economist

Comprehension

Is it true that… (be ready to justify your viewpoint)

1. Journalists have always done their best to describe events in the most exact way.	NO
2. Journalists always hunt for sensations.
3. Eddie Clontz was the founder of Weekly World News.
4. Eddie Clontz compared himself to a circus-master.
5. Weekly World News isa colorful broadsheet newspaper.
6. In 1981 Weekly World News was not a prosperous newspaper.
7. In 1988 Eddie Clontz was the first to declare that Elvis was alive.
8. Mr Clontz had a sound education in journalism.
9. Mr Clontz belonged to a right-wing party.
10. Mr Clontz was sure that all the stories published in his newspaper were true.
11. Mr Clontz was sure that his staff made the stories up.
12. Mr Clontz did all possible to make his stories trustworthy.
13. Educated city-dwellers believed Mr Clontz.

· Discuss the following questions

1. What kind of temptation is mentioned in the first passage of the story?

2. What catches the reader’s attention when he looks at the News?

3. Was the News a successful newspaper in 1981?

4. What stories got Mr Clontz noticed?

5. What can you say about Mr Clontz’s political views?

6. What did Mr Clontz do to make his stories “trustworthy”? Did he care about reliability of what he published?

7. What kind of people believed Mr Clontz’s stories?

· Focus on vocabulary

Find Russian equivalents to the following words and expressions:

1. to remain undistorted
2. to struggle with a temptation
3. a jaw-dropping story
4. a banner headline
5. an unassuming look
6. a hoax
7. disreputable
8. alert
9. daft
10. bizarre
11. to squirt
12. to strike a chord
13. in all seriousness

· Sharing the ideas

1. It’s quite evident that yellow press is popular all over the world. What makes it so popular? What sort of people read tabloids?

2. Some people think that tabloids are useless and even harmful for society. Do you think so? Why? Why not? Should journalists always write the truth? Justify your viewpoint.

Part 2

Magazines

· Are magazines popular in your country? Are they read as much as they used to be read 20 years ago?

· What type of magazines is popular among your parents? Grandparents? Your friends?

· Study the content of the box below.

All magazines can be divided into three types: Consumer magazines targeting general reading audiences who are subsets of the general public with special interests. For instance, there are consumer magazines that cover homes, sports, news, fashion, teen gossip, and many more groups of readers. Trade and Professional: magazines targeting people working in trades, businesses and professional fields. These periodicals provide news and information for readers working in specific industries with advertising content focused on those industries or trades including job notices. House Organ: also known as in-house magazines. These periodicals are published by for-profit and not-for-profit organizations such as companies, special interest groups and affinity groups for their customers, employees, clients and members. Regardless of the type of magazine, whether it's a trade publication or a consumer magazine, there are many different jobs that require both editorial and sales staff. These jobs vary according to title and duties. For instance, a magazine publisher handles the daily activities, implements policies and supervises all the magazine's departments. Other jobs at a magazine include payroll clerks, secretaries and information technology professionals. Writers (journalists) are responsible for written content such as articles and editorials. Typically, there are a limited number of reporters on the staff full time. Most of the articles are provided by freelance writers. Freelance writers, unlike staff writers, are paid per article and don't receive any benefits like health insurance. Although the magazine may not have a large number of writers, a number of different editors may be employed full time. Executive editors are responsible for the administrative duties of the department. Managing editors are responsible for the day-to-day activities in the editorial department. Copy editors are responsible for editing articles written by writers and check for errors in punctuation, grammar and spelling. In addition, copy editors ensure that magazine articles are in alignment with the magazine's editorial policy and style. Associate editors assign writers articles, supervise projects and review submitted articles. Art directors are another segment of the editing team. Instead of articles, they are responsible for graphics and photographs. Magazines also have jobs that don't involve writing or editing. Advertising sales agents, also called executive accountants, are responsible for business-to-business sales. Circulation directors are responsible for creating promotions such as contests and promotion campaigns to obtain new readers for magazine.

· Answer the following questions

1. What consumer magazines can you list? What is the most popular consumer magazine in your country? What does it cover? What target audience does it have? What makes it so popular?

2. What trade and professional magazines do you know? What audiences are they targeted at?

3. Have you ever seen an ‘in-house magazine’? What is special about such magazines?

4. What magazine jobs are mentioned in the text?

5. What is said about the writers (journalists) who work in the magazines? Who is ‘a freelance writer’? What is the difference between a stuff writer and a freelance writer?

6. Describe the work of different types of editors in a magazine.

7. What other jobs are mentioned in the information box?

· Reading

ü Read the note in the box below.

Advance Magazine Publishers Inc., doing business as Condé Nast, is a worldwide magazine publishing company. Its main offices are located in New York, Chicago, Miami, Madrid, Milan, Tokyo, London, Paris, and Moscow. It was founded in 1907 by Condé Montrose Nast. Condé Nast is creditedwith creating the now widely used magazine marketing strategy emphasizing magazines focused on a particular class or interest, sometimes known as lifestyle magazines. The group now includes 17 such publications, many of them the largest in their markets. It has an average total circulation of over 13 million issues a month, and an estimated actual readership five times larger than that.

ü Look at the picture.

ü Do you see any familiar covers? What magazines published by Condé Nast can be bought in your country? Do you read any of them? Speak about the magazines you know. Do you like them? Do you belong to their target audience?

ü You will read two small articles about the famous magazines published by Condé Nast.

Vogue

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast. Vogue was described by book critic Caroline Weber in The New York Times in December 2006 as "the world's most influential fashion magazine".

Vogue’s wide-reaching influence stems from various sources, including the persona and achievements of its most famous editor, its various charitable and community projects, its ability to reflect political discourse through fashion and editorial articles, and its move to emerging economies.

Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour, is widely credited as being one of the most influential figures in the global fashion industry, with the power to make or break a designer’s career. “Wintour’s approval can signal a commercial career for designers via investors who need a nod from a big gun like her to get their cheque books out,” says a famous American stylist.

Do you remember the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”? She is the inspiration behind the character Miranda Presley. She may be the Ice Queen but among her close friends including Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Oscar dela Renta, Nicole Kidman and many others, she can be warm and loyal. And a lot of people want to get into Wintour’s inner circle of friends.

The New Yorker

The New Yorker, along with another popular magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, composes ‘serious’ reading for American intellectuals. The weekly magazine was founded in 1925, and since the very beginning it has had a serious influence on the literary life of America. Among its authors were John Updike, Isaak B. Singer, Jerom D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky. The New Yorker is famous for its big features, especially for ‘Profiles’, detailed biographies of celebrated people.

A typical issue of The New Yorker contains ‘The Comment’ (the section which dwells upon the most interesting events of the week); ‘The mail’, ‘The talk of the town’ (city news); ‘A Critic at Large’ (art, culture and music analysis), ‘Fiction’ (usually a short story by a famous writer, or a piece of poetry); and ‘Shouts and Murmurs’ (the humorous page). The magazine is also famous for it’s remarkable ‘one-line-caption’ cartoons.

The New Yorker is a magazine dedicated to ideas. It is timeless and immediate, energetic and thoughtful, serious and funny. It's about good writing, a point of view, and a deeper understanding of the world. It’s an eclectic mixture of political and business coverage, social commentary, fiction, humor, art, poetry, and criticism.

ü How many names mentioned in both articles do you know?

ü What magazine seems more interesting to you?

ü Which magazine is supposed to contain more advertising? What sort of ads will they publish?

ü Which magazine will offer its readers big features? Do you think that these magazines will probably have different house style (a magazine's preferred manner of presentation and layout of written material)?

ü If you had a chance to choose a job in one of these magazines, which one would you choose? Give reasons for your choice.

Reading

ü You will read an article published in the section ‘Shouts and Murmurs’ of The New Yorker magazine.

ü Have you ever heard about ‘city legends’? Use the Internet to find the exact definition og this genre.

TRUE TALES? WELL, MAYBE…

His mother, my friend said, was an elderly widow who lived in an East Side walkup, with an ancient German shepherd named Bessie for company. When she reached him by telephone early on a Saturday morning to say that Bessie had just died, he was headed out the door to catch a plane. It was the beginning of the long Fourth of July holiday weekend, and he decided that this was not a crisis that would require him to change his plans. He expressed sorrow, but when his mother asked what she should do with the dog’s body he was brought up short. There was no other family at hand, and his mother, he knew, would not ask a friend for help in such an awkward predicament.

‘Isn’t there some neighbor in your building?’ – he said, hating the sound of his impatience. – ‘Or what about the super?’ Then he had an idea. ‘No, forget that,’ – he said. "Call the A.S.P.C.A*. instead. I'm sure they have a service that takes care of pets that have died. Look them up in the phone book—they're somewhere up in the Nineties, over by the river. They'll take care of Bessie for you. I’ve got to go, Ma. I'm sorry about everything, but you'll be O.K. Call you later.’

On the plane, he was unhappy about his part in the little drama, and uneasy about its outcome. He should have taken a later flight. His mother was capable and fiercely independent, but sometimes she got things wrong. Late that night, he reached her by long distance and heard the rest of the tale.

Yes she said, the A.S.P.C.A. did have a deceased-pet pickup service, but unfortunately not on weekends. They were sympathetic. If she could bring Bessie's body over, they said, they would do the rest. She hung up and thought it over. Then she pulled out the kitchen stool and got down her big old double-size weekend suitcase from its place on top of the closet. ‘It was dusty, but I cleaned it up nicely,’ – she told him. ‘And it was exactly the right size. Bessie looked asleep, curled up in there.’

‘Oh, Ma, you didn’t!’ – my friend groaned. ‘And what about the stairs? A bag with a dead dog in it – my God. Who did you get to help you?’

No need for help, she said calmly. There was a little bumping, to be sure, but the trip was all downstairs. The same thing was true when she got to the subway station.

‘The subway! You didn't take a cab? Ma, are you out of your mind!’‘Calm down,’ – she told him. ‘You know what I think about taxis. I got the local up to Ninety-sixth Street, which is the nearest stop, they told me. I got a seat right away. You see, I had everything planned out.’

What she hadn’t quite planned on was getting back up to the street – three flights of those steep, ironbound station steps. She had no other choice, so she took it slowly, lugging the burdened suitcase up each step and resting before starting again.

‘And no one helped you!’ – her son broke in. He was almost in tears. ‘This goddam city!’ ‘Well, there you’re wrong, dear.’ And she told him how these three young men who had been on the subway car with her had noticed her plight on the stairs and had kindly offered to give her a hand. The bag wasn't too heavy for them, of course – in fact, they whisked it up the first flight in no time and disappeared around a corner at the top. ‘I’ll meet you up on Ninety-sixth Street!’ – she called after them. ‘Thank you!’

There was a pause in his mother’s account here, my narrator said, and then she had to confess that when she gained the street at last her friendly helpers were nowhere to be seen. The suitcase was gone, too. It all came out the same in the end, she guessed, but this wasn't exactly the way she had planned to say goodbye to Bessie. He ventured some words of comfort, but here, too, his mother was ahead of him. ‘I keep thinking about the look on their faces when they opened my bag,’ – she said in a different tone of voice. ‘What a crazy city they must think this is!’

I heard this story years and years ago, and I've lost touch with the man who told it to me. He was an editor at Newsweek – not at all the sort who’d appropriate a tale like this and claim that it was about his own mother when it wasn’t. This is a mystery, because whenever I passed the story along, as I certainly did at the time, I kept running into people who had heard it before, only they claimed that it had happened to somebody else’s mother altogether. Except that sometimes it had happened in a bus station, or in the waiting room at Grand Central. Or else it wasn’t a little old lady with a dog in her suitcase: it was a sleepy pathology interne on the subway late at night, who dozed briefly and awoke to find that the medical parcel under his feet was gone – the one with the dead baby in it. Or the one with the head of a cadaver. Whatever version I heard, the person telling it to me absolutely knew the doctor or the old lady this had happened to – well, knew the doctor's best friend, who had told the story.

****

Let’s try another one, just the same – a story related by a woman sitting next to me at a dinner in New York six years ago. This couple out in New Jersey – they were friends of a friend others, she said – were straightening up their house at the end of another suburban Saturday-night party. It was late by the time the last guests had departed, and the host announced that he’d had too much Chardonnay and was too beat to pick up so much as another plate. He went off to bed, but his wife, thinking what the morning would look like, stayed on in the kitchen, rinsing and loading. There came a scratching noise at the back door, and she opened it to discover the family pet, Tartuffe, a standard poodle, dripping with rain and mud and frantic pride, with a large dead rabbit in his mouth. Horrified, she extracted the prize from Tartuffe’s jaws, shoved him into the garage, and then tried to think of some way out of the disaster. Sinkingly, she had recognized not only the dog, but the rabbit, which was the adored pet of the eight-year-old boy who lived next door.

Without a plan and without much hope, she began cleaning up the bunny delicti. A little work at the sink took care of the mud and blood. Encouraged, she fetched her hair dryer from the bathroom, and, with assiduous brushing and blowing, transformed the victim into a shining, almost breathing show animal: a rabbit right out of The Loved One. She slipped on her raincoat, tucked the precious bundle inside, and tiptoed across her soaking lawn and around to the back of the house next door, where she slipped the body into its vacant hutch and, as best she could, arranged it on the straw in the posture of a sleeping pet that had suffered a coronary accident. Noiselessly, she latched the door of the pen, and moments later was safely home again in her kitchen, where she mixed herself a nightcap.

She was awakened the next morning by the not unexpected telephone call. ‘The most terrible thing has happened!’ – cried the mother of the rabbit-keeper. ‘Freddie just came in and told us that Snuff is dead in his pen. I simply don't know what to tell him.’

Our resourceful heroine was shocked, then sympathetic, then sensible. ‘These things happen,’ – she said calmly. ‘Pets die, and it's always tough on kids. But isn't this why we let them keep animals in the first place? Everything dies, after all - it's part of life, you could say”.

‘Yes, yes – right,’ said the mother next door in a strangled voice. ‘That's exactly what we told him when Snuff died on Thursday, and we buried him out behind the garage. Now what do we say?’

****

Our last story is more than familiar: call it a classic. I have known it all my life, and for a time believed that I first heard it among the ghost stories whispered after lights-out at summer camp. It happens in Paris, during the World Exposition of 1889, when a young Englishwoman and her mother, on their way home from India, check into Crillon hotel. The older woman is unwell, and soon becomes weak and feverish. The hotel doctor is summoned, makes his examination, and asks permission to call in a colleague. The two consult lengthily at bedside, then bring in the anxious daughter and tell her that her mother is too ill to continue her journey at present. What is urgently required is a medicine that the second doctor has by chance left at home; someone must make the trip there, over to the opposite side of Paris, for the remedy is not available at a pharmacy. Fetch the medicine (the doctor’s wife will know where it is), bring it back at once, and Madame will be safe. The daughter, of course, volunteers for the errand, and is put into the second doctor’s own carriage for the journey.

The trip, however, is maddeningly slow, for the old coachman seems vague about the route and embroils them in one traffic tie-up after another. At last, they arrive, and the doctor's wife, after long searching in his dispensary, finds the vial described in her husband's note, wraps it slowly, and hands it over to the distraught daughter. It is already evening when the carriage begins the return trip, and now they become caught in the restaurant and theatergoing throngs; the cocher tries a detour, which seems only to take them farther away from their destination. At last, hours after her departure, the young woman abandons the carriage and, after many wrong turnings, finds her way on foot back to the Crillon.

The ending, I suspect, has already been twigged. The daughter’s weeping arrival and urgent inquiries about her mother are met with puzzled incomprehension. A sick English milady – we have no such guest here, Mademoiselle. . . . We have met before? ...We sent you from here this very morning! Impossible – surely Mademoiselle is in error. Did you confuse us with some other hotel, by chance? We regret infinitely, but. . . Wildly, the young woman demands to see the desk register, but her name and her mother's name are not to be found there. Take me to my mother’s room – mine is just next door! Take me to Rooms 28 and 29! The inspection is made, with the young woman rushing on ahead of the party of hoteliers, but when she reaches the hall there are no such rooms. Blank walls and ancient wallpaper are all she encounters where she left the patient.

Her mother is never found. The mystery, a cause celebre in its day, remains unsolved in the books of the Paris police, although its grisly details are well known. The ailing Englishwoman, the doctors quickly perceived, was suffering from the Black Plague, an imminently fatal infection picked up, no doubt, in India. Any news about such a disease loosed upon the crowded capital during its hugely publicized Exposition would bring all to ruin. The girl was dispatched on a cruel circuit of planned delays, and hurriedly assembled crews of police, forgers, carpenters, paperhangers, and city officials removed the body, altered the register, and remade the rooms and the corridor. As before in this sort of story, death comes knocking next door – but this time takes the door with him when he goes.

* A.S.P.C.A – American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

· Having read the text

ü Choose the variant that fits best according to the text

1. In the first story the narrator says that he ‘was brought up short’. It means that he was

A. angry with his mother

B. disappointed

C. was at a loss and didn’t know what to do

2. It’s said in the first story that the narrator’s mother

A. found the most convenient way to get to the Ninety-sixth Street

B. preferred one kind of transport to another

C. didn’t have enough money to pay for a tax

3. The three young men from the first story