Sections Above and Below This Page:

everything was going all right with the Diggers and the HaightAshbury, but he still wanted to see what else had been occurring in the West. The skimpy and often fallacious news about those other activists and happenings was to be found only in the self-indulgent folds of California's underground press which, much to his regret, Emmett was forced to skim for some slightly relevant information.

He never got around to looking at those California weekly undergrounds, however, because his eyes caught a glimpse of something tacked to the side wall as he was walking into the back room: the galley proofs of the copy for the next edition of the East Village Other, and one article's headline caught hold of Emmett and stopped him. He read the bold letters, DIGGER LOGORRHEA, and pulled the copy off the wall, reading it fast and wincing every time his eyes ran over the name Emmett Grogan. The girl who was sitting at her desk post got up and went into the back room when she saw from the look on Emmett's face what might happen.

He was furious! Not only had they not respected his appeal to them not to print anything about him in their paper, but either through incredible stupidity or malicious intent, they falsely reported the rap he gave a week before at the loft, attributing things to him which neither he nor anyone else had ever said that night. The article quoted him as having declared that an outbreak of terrorism was necessary to educate the people and force the exploiters of the counterculture to their knees to make them give away all their goods to the community for free! It was outrageous! Stone fucking lies, all of it! He could hardly believe it, and when he looked up and saw the skinhead editor standing there alongside the handlebar-moustached founder, publisher, executive editor, he blew it!

"What the fuck do you call this shit, huh? Well, what is it, motherfucker! "

"Hey, listen, this is a newspaper and we print . . ."

"You're fulla shit, it's a newspaper! It's a bloody, fuckin' rag!"

"We print stories our readers expect us to."

"Stories7! Fuckin', bold-faced, bullshit lies, you mean!"

"Look, we were there, both of us, 'n we heard . . ."

"You heard shit! There's not one thing in here that's even half true. It's all lies and you know it. Both of you motherfuckers know it! Nothing but fuckin' lies!"

"Look, that's debatable. You may think . . ."

"Debatable, my motherfuckin' ass! It's all a lie, 'n a stupid, dumb [end page 329]