The Working Press

Both the waning of America and the waning of the American novel have coincided with the decline of newspapers. Fortunately, a long, funny and sexy newspaper novel called The Working Press might yet save us all. The plot of The Working Press relentlessly unfolds at a third rate daily called the Boston Ledger-Transcript in 1980 just before the paper begins its long swan dive into bankruptcy. Typically, newspaper novels are funny books with sharp characters and The Working Press overflows with memorable characters and mirth. The publisher is a former slaver who detests reporters and frogs and would rather own a cable television company. The editor is embittered and mean. The sports writers are all morons. The night editor is world weary and damned. The hero is Sam Melton, a haunted war veteran who stumbled into journalism and doesn't have the sense to quit. His girlfriend is a Wellesley educated psychotherapist and when she betrays him he consoles himself with a beautiful and promiscuous young reporter whose life was ruined by Gone With The Wind. Melton is determined to prove that an old gangster named Frank "The Fat Tuna" Bompalarca murdered his own niece as part of a real estate deal. As he pursues his story Melton infuriates defense contractors, fire captains, librarians and cops. He disappoints women. He witnesses the birth of a new religion, argues with ghosts, makes up sources, ruins dinners, writes bad prose, collects dozens of parking tickets and gets evicted, mugged and roughed up. He can never quite get a handle on reality and he inadvertently changes the course of history on his way to becoming someone else. If you care about newspapers, novels or America you should read The Working Press. And, you should wear your old clothes when you read because sooner or later the book will make you fall down laughing. Then it will make you cry.