News of the Day

Adventures of a Wildly Cantankerous Veteran Newsroom Saving Dying Newspapers

When billion dollar Hedge Funds decide to revive news empires they destroyed, who do they recruit but Big Burt, the one-eyed editor who rounds up a scurrilous gang of hardened reporters who've seen it all. Burt leads them on an adventure that includes unlikely romance, tons of mystery, suspense; and satire about the news.

They operate out of a feed store in rural Kentucky with the aid of Chinese technology a decade ahead of U.S. newspapers, expanding and expounding on local news that's been left behind in the digital age.

The gathered news ranges from routine obituaries to black bears trapped with doughnuts, local elections to disgruntled native Americans. All sorts of lives matter as the veterans teach reporting to the next generation of truth seekers.

Some of the reporting touches on secret endeavors in which the Hedge Funds have an invested stake. Covering up back room dealings has never been part of the reporters' heritage and several versions of invented conspiracies leak to the supermarket tabloids. Will the sensational publicity destroy the true local news revival? Much depends on the rambunctious characters one-eyed Burt has put together. They plow fields of journalism with fresh minds. Whether it lasts depends on how you read Burt's philosophy: “When you know everything is temporary, especially being infallible, you have reason to hope.”

Of course, a lot of events were laughable.

As in all his novels the author remains steady in his belief that well-written literary fiction doesn't have to be “highbrow”; it has to embrace ideas about destiny in a storyline that holds the readers' attention and occasionally prompts laughter. No room for the hoity-toity. During his classic presentation at the 200^th anniversary writers' conference of North American Review, the nation's oldest literary magazine, he poked fun at his own novels for their obscurity, implying clarity in the digital age demands simplicity. Then he toyed with the digital age itself:

“Some nut will find a way to blow up the electric grid. All these electronic gadgets that rely on electricity will go dark. The batteries will run down. We're talking Cormac McCarthy darkness, black on black. . . except for one distant flicker of light. It's on a beach probably Australia. Survivors will make their way through the dark and find the light from a single candle. Next to the candle will be a lad with a notebook scribbling away with the last pencil on earth. He's writing about what happened. He hopes someone will read what he writes. That's what writers do. They hope.”

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“News of the Day” is a companion to a nine-novel series, written in a span of 50 years after Lewis H. Lapham, editor of Harper's, encouraged him by writing to the author's agent, “I love the way Kelton writes.” Psychologist B. G. Stice wrote in a review of Kelton's first published novel, in 2006. “The author is a master of plot twists. His writing is lyrical and stunning in its simplicity. He draws characters with a thin pencil and leaves the rest to your imagination. And he's not above pulling your leg.” That novel, “Splat!” has been described as “a surrealistic, erudite literary novel of romantic intrigue set on the slippery approaches to the dot.com era.” The series label has been A PETER KELTON NOVEL. It began to emerge in print in 2005 after 40 years of incubation. Originally conceived in 1965 with the help of literary agent Perry Knowlton who promoted two earlier novels, the final novel, “Dr. Bob,” is scheduled for publication in June 2022.

Peter Kelton