The more strong lights, the
more spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money they
pay you, the more the people buy the issue. You, Tom d'Invilliers, a
blighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, represent
the critical consciousness of the race--Oh, don't protest, I know the
stuff. I used to write book reviews in college; I considered it rare
sport to refer to the latest honest, conscientious effort to propound a
theory or a remedy as a 'welcome addition to our light summer reading.'
Come on now, admit it."

Tom laughed, and Amory continued triumphantly.

"We _want_ to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors,
constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to
believe in their statesmen, but they _can't_. Too many voices, too much
scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case
of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly
grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can
own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of
tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to
swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys
his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new
political ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more
confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their
tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them--"

He paused only to get his breath.

"And that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideas
either clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soul
without putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into people's heads; I might
cause a poor, inoffensive capitalist to have a vulgar liaison with
a bomb, or get some innocent little Bolshevik tangled up with a
machine-gun bullet--"

Tom was growing restless under this lampooning of his connection with
The New Democracy.

"What's all this got to do with your being bored?"

Amory considered that it had much to do with it.

"How'll I fit in?" he demanded. "What am I for? To propagate the race?
According to the American novels we are led to believe that the 'healthy
American boy' from nineteen to twenty-five is an entirely sexless
animal. As a matter of fact, the healthier he is the less that's true.
The only alternative to letting it get you is some violent interest.
Well, the war