Low-down

by Reynolds Packard

Clay Brewster was a Paris correspondent for the Interworld Press, and the trouble he got into--with men and women--makes a startling, high-spirited and genuine novel.

This is definitely not a book for those who fancy tales about fake characters in a Paris that never was. It is a book full of true-to-life people, with real feelings. It's about Americans in a Paris you'll know is real.

279 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

Reviews

[TalkinHorse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was written by Reynolds Packard (1903-1976), an actual feet-on-the-ground foreign correspondent who knew how the game was played. The book reads well and conveys a sense of the inner workings of the news organizations of the day. Read the opening lines and you'll get a sense of the narrator and his environment.

Don Shelby slipped unobtrusively through the door. He seemed confused by the cacophony of the teletypes, the tickers and typewriters and the inattention that he received from everybody. There must have been eight or nine people there, but there were all working like mad. There were two young women typing like mad, several men typing like mad, two office boys shoving paper about like mad, and an operator sending off copy like mad. Myself, I was trying like mad to bat out urgents on an American plane crash from the flowers and music that I was getting from our Le Bourget stringer in lieu of facts.

"Never mind how tenderly the French gendarmes removed the bodies," I growled into the phone. "Let's have the number of dead and injured first."

Even then, with one shoulder hunched up so as to hold the phone piece next to my ear while I typed with both hands, I noticed Shelby and thought this is where I came in -- only the scene had been B.A. -- seventeen years ago.

In his corduroy jacket and trousers he reeked of Joe College, but a timid, sensitive Joe College, if you know what I mean? Not one who knows it all, but one who has learned something and is eager to learn a lot more.

I noticed that when the confusion of his first impression passed, his eyes settled on the two women in the office -- one American, the other French. They were both the kind men noticed. I didn't think much about it at the time, being as busy with the plan crash as a violinist in mid-aria. Then he saw me and must have guessed I was the fellow in the slot he was looking for because he came over and waited for me to speak.

The tipsters' phone rang again. With the receiver cupped to my ear, I began doodling on the copy paper in front of me. The story wasn't important, but I never liked to tell tipsters they were phoning in utter crap because then they got hurt and afterwards were afraid to call you even when there was a hot news break.

Don looked at the women again and then his eyes wandered to the posters on the walls. They proclaimed the IP to be the fastest, most accurate and impartial newsagency in the world. They portrayed clean shaven, smartly garbed young Americans with pencil and pad in hand talking to modern celebrities all over the globe: Roosevelt, Churchill, Joe Louis, De Gaulle, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-shek and Pope Pius XII. There were also photographs of earnest young Interpressers crouching behind sandbags and escarpments, interviewing Greek guerillas, Palestine terrorists, Chinese communists and Moslem rioters. Woven in and out of all this art work were the ever-recurring phrases:

"First with the News," "History When It's Born," "IP Stands for Impartiality," and "IP Means Impartial Reporting."

There was also a proud list of two and three minute IP scoops on international events.

Don was as impressed as the next fellow by these blatant immodest declarations by the IP (Interworld Press Association) of its own merits. I didn't notice his reaction at the time, but he told me later he was so awed by this display of achievement, that he would have fled the office if I hadn't spoken to him when I did.

Note how, although news reportage and technology has changed drastically since the era this was written, the human environment stays the same: The façade of respectability, behind which lie fallible and dubious human beings.

The title of the original hardback edition was "The Kansas City Milkman"; a reference to an internal news industry aphorism that the text should be written so that a Kansas City milkman would understand it.