Read Aurora Dawn for Free Online Page A

was lacking in the American radio brew;
     for, in addition to exquisite opera and symphonic music broadcast on weekend afternoons–surveys having proved that more people
     listened at night, this time was naturally reserved for paying customers like coffee and toothpaste companies–there were numerous
     programs engendered and paid for by the radio companies themselves, called “sustainers,” and having no other purpose than
     the uplifting of the nation’s cultural tone. These bore such titles as “The American Forum,” “You Can Love Music,” “The Half
     Hour of Immortals,” “Philosopher’s Round Table,” “God Behind the News,” and so forth; occasionally, to everyone’s surprise,
     one of these items gathered such a popular following that it attained commercial sponsorship, thus making culture useful as
     well as cultural.
    Andrew was in the sales department of the Republic Broadcasting Company, and his job was to see that cordiality was maintained
     between the sponsors who paid such large sums for radio time, the network which gave them its gargantuan technical facilities
     in return, and the advertising agencies which acted as middlemen. He was assigned the supervision of several programs and
     kept a watchful eye on the hothouse blossom of personal relations in each of them, moistening and fertilizing as necessary.
     The requirements of his task were nine parts likableness to one part intelligence; if a young man began to exceed the proportion
     in favor of intelligence he was on his way to dismissal or an executive post, depending on how well his superiors enjoyed
     his company.
    Andrew’s affability and discretion, his expert golf game (which he had acquired, together with a high regard for the privileges
     of wealth, in years of caddying at the Colorado Springs course), his engaging smile, and a lucky capacity for swallowing large
     amounts of hard liquor without visible change in his manner, had endeared him to the powerful head of his department, the
     sales manager, Wilhelm Van Wirt. This chunkily built, hard-drinking gentleman, who spent his waking hours in alternation between
     gracious submission to the eccentricities of sponsors and heavy tyranny over his office force, suddenly conceived a deep,
     sentimental liking for Andy and took every means to be close with him. Starting with occasional lunches together, their intimacy
     broadened to include weekends at Van Wirt’s home in Nutley, New Jersey, in company with his nervous, overdressed wife and
     a bulbously unattractive daughter of thirteen. Gradually dropping caution, the sales manager admitted Andy to the inner recesses
     of his life by making him a companion at the expensive and extremely private parties he occasionally arranged for the pleasure
     of certain clients who expected such hospitality as an informal rebate on large contracts.
    The author, who is concealing nothing in this truthful narrative except the operation of his hero’s stream of consciousness,
     is forced to admit that Andrew did not hold himself aloof from the questionable merriment, and indeed derived an extraordinary
     excitement and pleasure from this first encounter with the snaring luxuries of this world. I groan to tell you of the pretty
     but careless girls with whom he formed passing connections entirely unredeemed by spiritual values, and of the gallons of
     European wines and mellow whiskies which passed down his healthy throat with ease. There must be among my readers well-reared
     young men in their early twenties who have not despised instruction, who have avoided these pitfalls, and who have the sense
     to he horrified at these revelations. Let them close the book at once and pick up something more advanced and profitable–Pascal’s
Pensées
, or the poetry of Milton–they have no need of the simple moral which this story will teach.

    –An informal rebate on large contracts–
    Things were at this stage when Mr. Talmadge Marquis, president of