Everything Dies



Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City.
Fats Domino, Detroit City Blues.
Sonny Boy Williamson, Pontiac Blues.
Peppermint Harris, Cadillac Funeral.

General Motors Corp., the century-old automaker battered by the economic downturn, mounting debt and management problems, filed for bankruptcy Monday as part of an Obama administration plan to shrink the automaker to a sustainable size and give a majority ownership stake to the federal government.

It is the largest industrial bankruptcy in U.S. history and the fourth-largest overall and comes as smaller rival Chrysler won approval to sell most of its assets to Italy's Fiat, moving Chrysler closer to its goal of a quick exit from court protection.

The government will end up with a 60 percent ownership stake and an unprecedented role in reshaping the auto industry.

NPR, 1 June 2009.



He had a '38 Chevy. We piled into that and took off for parts unknown. "Where we going?" I asked. The buddy did the explaining...Rickey always had three or four dollars in his pocket and was happy-go-lucky about things. He always said, "that's right man, there you go--dah you go, dah you go!" And he went. He drove seventy miles an hour in the old heap, and we went to Madera beyond Fresno to see some farmers about manure.

Jack Kerouac, On the Road.



In America nobody pays attention to [the writer]. He has no part in our ideology and our politics...In my country, instead of asking the artist what makes children commit suicide, they go the chairman of General Motors and ask him.

William Faulkner, speaking in Nagano City, Japan, 1955.



You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.

Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), "The Wire," 2003.