Requiem for Zeitgeist

Introduction

Item. The short story is the fabulous invalid of American letters. Item. According to an Authors Guild survey, only 39 percent of all working authors support themselves exclusively through writing-related work.

Those two propositions are connected. Many of the best American writers of the 20th century—Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut—subsidized their literary careers by writing for high-paying mass-market “slicks” like The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Liberty, and This Week. Although writing for the slicks, with their middle-class taboos, could corrupt a talent, it allowed these authors to support themselves while gestating and writing the novels that earned them a place in the American literary canon.

Television has pretty much usurped the short story’s entertainment role in our culture; the golden age of the mass-circulation magazine is behind us. In a reminder of that age, the adventurous Seven Stories Press has issued a 911-page doorstop of a book containing every published story and the best of the unpublished ones, slick or unslick, that Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote—97 in all. His earnings from them helped him to write the novels for which he is best known: The Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse-Five, Mother Night, Player Piano.

This volume is obviously a work of love. It was edited by two Vonnegut devotees: Jerome Klinkowitz, an academic who wrote a critical study of him, and Dan Wakefield, a novelist and magazinist, who hails from Vonnegut’s hometown of Indianapolis. Dividing the labor, they have organized the stories into categories (“War,” “Women,” “Science,” “Romance,” etc.) and written illuminating headnotes, as well as informative introductions.

The stories, like the sample below (published here for the first time anywhere) are entertaining, witty, sad, ironic, and served up in Vonnegut’s vernacular style, which to me sounds like Indianapolis talking. I doubt we shall ever see his like again.

—Richard Lingeman

Trump is using his anthem hissy fit to fundraise:

Here's the new Graham-Cassidy bill

Source: Axios

Exclusive: NFL airing unity ad in prime time on Sunday

Source: CNN

The NFL is dusting off a one-minute ad that it produced for the Super Bowl earlier this year. It was originally made to "demonstrate the power of football to bring people together," the league said.

So the NFL is going to run the ad again on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" telecast on Sunday.

The decision was finalized on Sunday morning.

"We think this is the single best response to demonstrate what we are about," an NFL spokesman told CNN. "It stands in stark contrast to some who practice the politics of division."

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/24/media/nfl-unity-ad-trump/index.html?sr=twCNN092417nfl-unity-ad-trump1118AMStory

The MSNBC crew letting their hair down (video tweet):

Say NO to the Cassidy-Graham healthcare plan- or this could be you!

National Museum of African American History and Culture celebrates first anniversary

Source: CBS

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- About one year ago, "CBS This Morning" had the honor of being the first media outlet to broadcast from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Since then, nearly three million people have visited the newest Smithsonian museum, making it one of the most popular Smithsonian destinations in the nation's capital.

More than 8,000 people a day walk through the museum, twice as many people as organizers had prepared for. It's been a overwhelming response to a place that confronts painful issues people don't always want to talk about -- and celebrates the triumphs -- reports CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford.

A ringing bell signaled the museum's official opening on Sept. 24, 2016.

"It is an act of patriotism to understand where we've been," President Obama said at the opening ceremony.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-museum-of-african-american-history-culture-1-year-anniversary/?linkId=42614535

Poll: only 24% of Americans approve of Graham-Cassidy

Source: Vox

With their deadline fast approaching, Senate Republicans’ rush to repeal and replace Obamacare remains as unpopular as ever with the public.

Only 24 percent of Americans support Graham-Cassidy, the health care bill Republicans are furiously whipping to pass ahead of September 30, according to a new poll released Thursday by Public Policy Polling. The poll is the first to date of the proposed legislation, which would cripple Obamacare’s exchanges and sharply cut long-term Medicaid spending while also taking billions of funding from blue states that implemented Obamacare and giving it to red ones that did not.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has promised that the bill will result in more people having insurance. Most Americans do not believe him. Majorities believe that Graham-Cassidy would instead both raise health care costs for most Americans and result in fewer Americans obtaining coverage. Only 20 percent said they thought the bill would cover more Americans.

Republicans have run against political headwinds since first trying to pass their health care bill at the beginning of this congressional session in January. The House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, passed in May, polled abysmally, as did the Senate’s later attempts in July. One poll from the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation found 63 percent of voters in deep-red districts disliked Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act. Another poll found support for AHCA at around 24 percent.

Read more: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/22/16349470/polling-graham-cassidy-not-good

"Here's Lindsey Graham saying he would never vote for a bill that includes bribes. Liar."

Foo Fighters Carpool Karaoke