And Now the News Read Online Free PDF

How many times have you wanted to do something with your wife, go somewhere, ask her to get something from the cleaners—and then decided not to because she wouldn’t listen?” He glanced around at Joe, and charitably turned away from the contorted face. “Don’t answer that: you know, and it doesn’t matter to me.
    â€œNow get this, Joe. There’s something in all animals just about as basic as hunger. It’s the urge to attack something that’s retreating, and its converse: to be wary of something that won’t retreat. Next time a dog comes running up to you, growling, with his ears laid back, turn and run and see if he doesn’t take a flank steak out of your southern hemisphere. After you get out of the hospital, go back and when he rushes you, laugh at him and keep going on about your business, and see him decide you’re not on his calorie chart for the day. Well, the same thing works with people. No one’s going to attack you unless he has you figured out—especially if he figures you’ll retreat. Walk around with a big neon sign on your head that says ‘HEY EVERYBODY I WILL RETREAT,’ and you’re just going to get clobbered wherever you go. You’ve got a sign like that and it lights up every time you open your mouth. Caht eet owoot.”
    Joe’s lower lip protruded childishly. “I can’t help what kind of voice I’ve got.”
    â€œProbably you can’t. I can, though.”
    â€œBut how—”
    â€œShut up.” Zeitgeist returned all the keys to a neutral position and listened a moment to the blaring audio. Then he switched it off and began flicking keys, some up, some down. “Mind you, this isn’t a matter of changing a tenor into a baritone. New York City once had a mayor with a voice like a Punch and Judy show, and he hadn’t an ounce of retreat in him. All I’m going to do is cure a symptom. Some people say that doesn’t work, but ask the gimpy guy whofinds himself three inches taller and walking like other people, the first time he tries his built-up shoes. As the guy who wears a well-made toupee.” He stared for a while at the ’scope, and moved some more keys. “You want people to listen to you. All right, they will, whether they want to or not. Of course,
what
they listen to is something else again. It better be something that backs up this voice I’m giving you. That’s up to you.”
    â€œI don’t under—”
    â€œYou’ll understand a lot quicker if we fix it so you listen and I talk. O.K.?” Zeitgeist demanded truculently, and sent over such an engaging grin that the words did not smart. “Now, like I said, I’m only curing a symptom. What you have to get through your thick head is that the disease doesn’t exist. All that stuff about your sister Anna, and Joey, that doesn’t exist because it happened and it’s finished and it’s years ago and it doesn’t matter any more. Lutie, Barnes … well, they bother you mostly because they won’t listen to you.
They’ll listen to you now
. So that botherment is over with, too; finished, done with, nonexistent. For all practical purposes yesterday is as far beyond recall as twenty years ago; just as finished, just as dead. So the little boy who got punished by his big sister until he thought he deserved being punished
—he
doesn’t exist. The man with the guilty feeling killing a kid called Joey, he doesn’t exist either any more, and by the way he wasn’t guilty in the first place. The copy man who lets a pipsqueak sadist prick him with petty sarcasms—he’s gone too, because now there’s a man who won’t swallow what he wants to say, what he knows is right. He’ll say it, just because
people will listen
. A beer stein is pretty useless to anyone until you put beer in it. The gadget I’m going to give you won’t