ALONG THE WAY

When It Comes to Replacing a Picture Tube, You May Be Courting an Electronic Coronary

I could tell by the look on the TV repairman's face that the prognosis was not good. I took a deep breath and said, “What seems to be the problem?” “It's the picture tube,” he said, and laid a sympathetic hand on the brow of the Trinitron. “It's shot.” “Oh,” I said, and for the next few seconds the single syllable was like a rickety suspension bridge upon which my wavering aplomb shuddered. My suspicion was confirmed: an electronic coronary. I stared at the interior of the set where the back panel had been removed to expose a miscellany of glass, plastic, and metal innards. A familiar scene from any number of old movies and TV shows replayed itself in my mind: a doctor unwrapping gauze bandages from a nervous patient's eyes. Will I see again? Gelatinous images trembling on the brink of incipient vision.

“How ... much does a picture tube cost?” I asked uneasily.

The repairman quoted a figure, and I took half a step backward from its psychic impact. Organ transplants, of course, are not cheap.

“Well...” I said, and made a vague gesture.

“You'd just as well get a new set,” he said. “Although this one's still in pretty good shape otherwise.” I glanced at the Trinitron. “Well, I'll think it over....” I saw him to the door, then came back into the living room and stood looking at the mute screen beyond the boundaries of whose purblind vision even as I looked I knew comedians did shtick, lovers romanced and quarreled, cars careened, newscasters discoursed, uniformed titans clashed on playing fields, anthropomorphic animals capered, and huckstersvended everything from dog food to diamond necklaces. All in vibrant Sonycolor. I thought of the iridescent plumage of the NBC peacock, the dazzling MTV logos, and the efficacy with which a Sony translates the old three-strip Technicolor to bring to brightly chromatic life the glossy color of Marilyn Monroe's hair, the varied hues of Carmen Miranda's tutti-frutti hat, the Wyoming sky in Shane, and so on.

Crossing the room to a bookshelf, I took down a mint condition paperback copy of Larry McMurtry's Streets of Laredo. I'd bought it after the conclusion of the TV miniseries adaptation of the novel, having enjoyed the miniseries so much that I'd decided to read the book. I remembered thinking that reading it would be slightly perverse crossbreeding the literary experience with my video-incarnated memories of its TV adaptation. It would constitute a not very resolute attempt to get back to the joy of reading in lieu of watching too much TV. In any case, my plan to read the book had been undermined by the appeal of some other miniseries. As a writer, it bothered me to think of what short shrift I'd been giving the print culture since the Sony made its debut in my living room.

I turned on the TV set. Its screen remained blank, reflecting only the familiar scape of the living room in its glass; there wasn't even the hopeful alabaster dazzle of snow and white noise. The picture tube was dead.

I remembered bringing the set home years ago and removing it from its box on the living room floor. I remembered the thrill when I first saw the opulent color bars that precede programming on some of the channels. In the wee hours of the morning, in a darkened room, those bars cast radiant, neon-bright colors on the living room carpet. I remembered calling the set an “electronic fireplace” and curling up in front of its iridescent flame for hours at a time.

channels. In the wee hours of the morning, in a darkened room, those bars cast radiant, neon-bright colors on the living room carpet. I remembered calling the set an “electronic fireplace” and curling up in front of its iridescent flame for hours at a time.

But then I remembered some other things, too: the heady bouquet of a vintage book, the pleasant irritation of getting good black print all over my fingertips while reading, the satisfying heft of a substantial volume, the pleasure of generating my own imagery without the help of Norman Lear, CBS, or TNT. And I remembered another scene from an old movie (Surprise Package) with David Niven charging across a room to deftly kick out the screen of a TV set. There also were the images of Wendy O. Williams taking apart a TV set with a sledgehammer in accompaniment to a Plasmatics song. And the very first music video programmed on MTV: the Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star.

Of course, I realized, the dichotomy need not be characterized in terms of Aristotelian logic either television or print. This or that. There is room in the culture for both TV warranties and ex libris stickers, for cable TV and bookstores, for video rental shops and book clubs; and one can by turns play the part of couch potato and bookworm. Our sensibilities shouldn't be harnessed by any one mode of perception because it's the contrasts of experience that make life interesting.

I turned off the TV set and put McMurtry's book back on the shelf, then took down another book, one whose characters hadn't already been cast by a Hollywood director and televised into my consciousness. The texture of the cover had an almost voluptuous feel. With book in hand, I went into the kitchen to find something to eat. I would get a new television set... later. In the meantime, I'd never eaten a TV dinner while reading Robert Frost, and I thought the experience might be interesting.