from GLASS/PAPER/BEANS: REVELATIONS ON THE NATURE AND VALUE OF ORDINARY THINGS, by Leah Hager Cohen. Doubleday. 299 pp.

Cohen is the author of Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World.

The ritualistic customs of hospitality embedded in ancient cultures tell something of news's value, the peculiar nature of which is that it exists only in exchange, only in the sharing, gratifying both giver and receiver in its transmission.

In fairy tales, again and again, the travel-weary stranger must be welcomed in, must be given bread and wine and a place by the hearth. Slowly, the stranger's hair dries; the ratty cloak is shed; color is restored to cheek and brow. The stranger is a deity, or a prince, or a sage. Reward then flows from the stranger's pockets or lips; kindness is returned with gold, silks, magic, news. The stranger sits up all night by the flickering fire and in verse requites the hospitality bestowed. In myths, parables, fables, folklore, this story recurs with the quiet fervency of prayer.

The longing for news is the longing for true stories, for interlocking images that will connect up in huge, vivid portraiture, that will shed their cumulative light on our world so that we may more perfectly understand what it is to live in it. Or it is a longing for community, for solidarity, consensus on what we all agree to know, so that we may proceed with one another from a common conception, speak the same language, be less lonely. Or it is a longing for power -- but this aspect of news can result only from its rationing, from the careful apportioning or guarding, the withholding or distorting of news; in this realm, news may be bought and sold and bargained with. But here it crosses the border into commodity; here it ceases to be news, exactly, and transforms itself into secrets. News itself has traditionally been free, not measurable according to units of price and property.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe