Saturday

“He's feeling a pull, like gravity, of the approaching TV news.

It's a condition of the times,

this compulsion to hear how it stands with the world,

and be joined to the generality, to a community of anxiety.

The habit's grown stronger these past two years;

a different scale of news value has been set by monstrous and spectacular scenes. Everyone fears it, but there's also a darker longing in the collective mind,

a sickening for self-punishment and a blasphemous curiosity.

Just as the hospitals have their crisis plans,

so the television networks stand ready to deliver, and their audiences wait.

Bigger, grosser next time.

Please don't let it happen.

But let me see it all the same, as it's happening and from every angle,

and let me be among the first to know.”

Ian McEwan - SATURDAY