In The End, The Only

The Best Newspapermen I Know Are Those Most Thrilled By The Daily Pump Of City Room Excitements; They Long Fondly For A Good Murder; They Pray That Assassinations, Wars, Catastrophes Break On Their Editions.

One Thing Is Certain: For Many Of Those Who Came Back From Wwii, The Music Of Frank Sinatra Was No Consolation For Their Losses. Some Had Lost Friends. Some Had Lost Wives And Lovers. All Had Lost Portions Of Their Youth. More Important To The Sinatra Career The Girls Started Marrying The Men Who Came Home. Bobby Socks Vanished From Many Closets. The Girls Who Wore Them Had No Need Anymore For Imaginary Lovers; They Had Husbands. Nothing Is More Embarrassing To Grownups Than The Passions Of Adolescence, And For Many, Frank Sinatra Was The Passion.

My Ambition Was To Embrace Those General Qualities That Ernest Hemingway, A Former Newspaperman, Once Said Should Be Present In All Good Books: 'the Good And The Bad, The Ecstasy, The Remorse And Sorrow, The People And The Places And How The Weather Was.'

There Is Something Elegantly Sinister About The Rolling Stones. They Sit Before You At A Press Conference Like Five Unfolding Switchblades; Their Faces Set In Rehearsed Snarls; Their Hair Studiously Unkempt And Matted; Their Clothes Part Of Some Private Conceit; And The Way They Walk And Talk And The Songs They Sing All Become Part Of Some Long Mean Reach For The Jugular.

There Are 10,000 Books In My Library, And It Will Keep Growing Until I Die. This Has Exasperated My Daughters, Amused My Friends And Baffled My Accountant. If I Had Not Picked Up This Habit In The Library Long Ago, I Would Have More Money In The Bank Today; I Would Not Be Richer.