New York Globe-Post

New York Globe-Post is the newspaper that publicizes Scott Carey’s shrinking and makes his changing body a subject for mass attention. Its relationship with Scott moves from an offer he rejects to a publicity contract he signs and later tries to break; the resulting coverage reaches readers far beyond the paper itself and brings unwanted attention into his daily life.

Origins and the Offer

The story reaches the newspaper through a chain of personal connections. Marty mentions Scott’s mysterious affliction to a fellow Kiwanian, and the news travels outward through the city, spreading by successive relays rather than through a deliberate announcement by Scott. Mel Hammer then comes to the apartment with an offer from New York Globe-Post. The newspaper thus enters the story as an institution able to convert a private condition into public information, while Scott and his family are still coping with its immediate practical consequences.

Scott initially refuses. The household badly needs money: there is a substantial bill for the first examinations, five hundred dollars owed to Marty, and accumulated expenses from a difficult winter. The family has also had to buy winter clothing and fuel, and its long residence in Los Angeles has left them unprepared for an Eastern winter. The medical tests have been completed without charge, but that has not removed the other debts. His refusal therefore does not signal that the offer is economically irrelevant. It shows how sharply the prospect of publicity conflicts with his desire to decide how others encounter him.

From Refusal to Contract

At the time of his refusal, Scott is living through what he later recognizes as a sustained period of anger at his circumstances. He rejects the prospect of being displayed to satisfy public curiosity and resents Louise Carey for not supporting his decision as emphatically as he wants. He turns his frustration toward her, though he knows even as he speaks that his anger is misdirected. The episode connects the newspaper’s offer to pressures already inside the household: money is urgently needed, but accepting publicity seems to Scott like exchanging privacy and dignity for security.

Scott does eventually sign a contract with the paper and goes through with the publicity. The surviving account does not explain what changed his mind, so the shift is best understood through the contrast it records: he had condemned the prospect of becoming a public curiosity, yet later endured the arrangement even while telling himself he would break the contract. His participation is neither uncomplicated consent nor simple refusal. The newspaper’s access to him becomes a negotiated and unstable part of his life, with the family’s financial need remaining part of the background against which that choice is made.

Coverage and Its Costs

The paper’s publicity is built from repeated images and examinations. Photographers pose Scott in shoes five sizes too large, beside Beth Carey and Louise Carey, alongside a suit of his old clothes, and next to a tape measure that makes his changing size legible to readers. In one photograph, Hammer’s large hand points to the relevant mark. Doctors appointed by the paper examine Scott, and his case history is retold for a readership described as numbering a million. The coverage translates a complicated and frightening condition into a sequence of scenes, comparisons, and measurements designed for circulation.

That circulation does not stop at the page. Offers arrive for radio, television, stage, and nightclub appearances, as well as for magazine articles and syndication of the Globe-Post series. People gather outside the apartment to stare and ask for Scott’s autograph. Religious advocates urge him, in person and by mail, to join their movements, while disturbing letters arrive from strangers. These reactions show how quickly the newspaper’s account helps make Scott recognizable beyond the home. Public exposure gives other people a claim, real or imagined, on his attention and appearance; the publicity he once feared becomes part of the environment he must navigate.

Scott’s response eventually becomes an attempt to reclaim control. In a remembered episode, he drives to the city, tells the paper he is breaking the contract, and leaves in a state of intense anger. The recollection is followed by a tire blowout two miles beyond Baldwin: he struggles to keep the car from striking the centre wall, steers off the highway, and stops. The physical interruption follows his attempted break with the newspaper, but the evidence does not establish that the two events are causally connected. Later, Scott recalls that he continued with the contract despite repeatedly telling himself that he would end it, even if Louise Carey resented the decision. The pattern is one of participation shadowed by resistance, not a settled reconciliation with publicity.

The Newspaper in the Cellar

New York Globe-Post returns as a physical object in the cellar, where Scott finds a copy folded and propped near a cylindrical coil. Dust covers its lettering, and water from a leak has blotted the paper. He identifies it from the remaining letters and recognizes it as the newspaper that had published his story, as much of it as he had been able to endure. Its damaged condition contrasts with the expansive reach of its coverage: a mass-circulation account is now a worn, partly obscured object encountered by a man isolated from the public that once watched him.

The copy prompts Scott to remember the offer, his refusal, the publicity, and the anger that followed. In another cellar scene, Louise Carey brings home the previous evening’s paper. Scott reads a short item on page three reporting that he has been missing for three months and that no word has come from any source. The announcement makes his absence news, too, but it also marks a reversal in the paper’s relation to him: the story now reports that he cannot be found, rather than presenting him for inspection. The newspaper remains a link between Scott’s private isolation and a public narrative about him, while its brief report can only register the disappearance, not explain the life beyond public view.