{"id":75400,"date":"2014-08-14T15:36:54","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T19:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=75400"},"modified":"2014-08-14T15:36:54","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T19:36:54","slug":"fit-to-print","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/14\/fit-to-print\/","title":{"rendered":"Fit to Print"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Silly-Putty_2\"<\/a>

A 1965 ad for Silly Putty, plainly advertising its ability to pick up newsprint.<\/p><\/div>\n

On Monday, the Times<\/em>\u2019s David Carr had a gloomy prognosis for the fate of print newspapers. He wrote<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s a measure of the basic problem that many people haven\u2019t cared or noticed as their hometown newspapers have reduced staffing, days of circulation, delivery and coverage. Will they notice or care when those newspapers go away altogether? I\u2019m not optimistic about that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Carr and many others are alive to the societal, artistic, and human implications of this loss. All this aside, it means lost jobs. You don\u2019t need me to say that, or to belabor the passing of an era. These things are too huge to contemplate.<\/p>\n

So you start thinking about the stupid things. The oblong bags newspapers come in. What will people use to clean up after their dogs? Where will they get rubber bands? Will \u201ctrain-style\u201d folding become a lost art? And what about Silly Putty<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Silly Putty can\u2019t really be called a major casualty in this overhaul, but it is something that will be decisively rendered extinct. It\u2019s a retro toy now\u2014if you can even call something which was so obviously the byproduct of industrial experimentation a \u201ctoy\u201d\u2014but with the death of the newspaper, one of its primary functions (if you can call it a function) will be nullified.<\/p>\n

Silly Putty should be placed in a time capsule immediately on grounds of sheer weirdness. Try explaining it to an alien: \u201cIt\u2019s putty, but it\u2019s \u2026 silly. It\u2019s sort of flesh-colored. It has a really distinctive chemical smell. It stretches, and snaps, and turns into a puddle. If you roll it up, it bounces like a ball. Oh, and it picks up newsprint. Then it gets really grubby and you keep it in a plastic egg, forever.\u201d If Silly Putty\u2019s origins<\/a> are clear enough\u2014it was a World War II\u2013era attempt to address rubber shortages\u2014its ability to transfer newsprint is more mysterious. How did someone figure this out? And how did anyone decide it was a selling point? <\/p>\n

And yet, from the get-go, it was. When this sea captain (you just have to stop asking after a certain point) extolls its manifold virtues in an early commercial, newsprint-transfer is listed prominently:<\/p>\n