Much has been written about Manhattan, and New York City in general, but after visiting the city last week for the first time, I feel compelled to offer some thoughts.
I’ve always been intimidated by New York. It holds no romance for me, only fear. It is the Big City of all big cities. The way I envision New York is that everyone who lives there is a savvy predator or a canny survivor. Now that I’ve visited there, that perception is stronger still.
I don’t get this feeling from other cities I’ve lived in or visited: Seattle, Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, Washington, D.C.—even London, Liverpool, and Edinburgh in the UK. Only Detroit rivals New York on my Scary Places Index, and that’s because Detroit is just fucking scary.
Perhaps this is because New York looms so large in our collective consciousness. Here are some of Jonathan Franzen’s thoughts on the city:
One measure of New York’s enduring primacy is that it continues to act as a lightning rod for national resentment. When Americans rail against ‘Washington,’ they mean the abstraction of federal government, not the District of Columbia. New York is resented as an actual place—for its rudeness, its arrogance, its crowds and dirt, its moral turpitude, and so forth. Global resentment is the highest compliment a city can receive, and by nurturing the notion of the Apple as the national Forbidden Fruit such resentment guarantees not only that ambitious souls of the ‘If I can make it there, I’d make it anywhere’ variety will gravitate toward New York but that the heartland’s most culturally rebellious young people will follow. There’s no better way of rejecting where you came from, no plainer declaration of an intention to reinvent yourself, than moving to New York; I speak from personal experience.
I never felt the ‘If I can make it there, I’d make it anywhere’ impulse. I know that many writers do feel that impulse though, and they wind up in Brooklyn (‘[T]he physical act of moving your possessions from Manhattan to Brooklyn is now the equivalent of a two-year M.F.A. program. When you get to the other side, they hand you three Moleskine notebooks and a copy of “Blogging for Dummies.”’) I also never felt the need to reinvent myself.
There have been times in my life when I worried about this, when I worried about my lack of a desire to live in New York and wait tables but also be a Serious Writer and grind out a meager existence in the dirt and the heat. I’ve worried that I have not suffered.
But now that I’ve been there, I realize this is all something of a myth. New York cannot make me a better writer.
3 responses so far ↓
1 NanMel // Jul 23, 2008 at 5:01 pm
New York doesn’t make you a better writer, it makes you a better person. And by better, I mean ruder and more bitter.
I think that might be part of the love affair with it. People think it will make them tougher, and I think people like to be tough, or at least thought of as tough.
And maybe that’s why people think it eventually makes them better writers, because they think they have become better people, because they have become tougher and more savvy and now know more of the world, because they have an intimate relationship with New York. Or at least their small corner of it.
Although, I always have had the romantic vision of moving to New York. I also used to have a romantic vision of living in a shit-hole and being a waitress. You can ask your wife how that one turned out for me. As I get older, I feel less and less of a desire to actually pick up and move there though. I did, however, fall in love with the city when I was there.
I’ve visited a couple times and have loved it. I partly love how, because it is so famous, you already feel like you know where you are, even though, really, you don’t. I also love how bars stay open really late, though this is now only on principle because I do not stay out that late. And I love a city where you can buy hot dogs and pretzels on the street.
Also, I moseyed on over to your MilSpouse blog, and considered responding with some choice words. I quite felt the opposite about my visit to Ground Zero. Of course, my first visit there was only about six months after 9/11 so it may have been more relevant. My second visit was several years later and admittedly less impactful, though I assumed it was because I had indeed already been there; and because of the ass-face I was with and his bouncing ball.
2 tlitchfo // Jul 23, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I was just plain impressed by New York. It is a singular place. My reactions to it were mixed, however, which is why I’m writing a series of posts about it.
I felt like I was ‘missing something’ about Ground Zero. I don’t fully understand my lack of emotional response.
3 Mitja // Jul 24, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I lived in NYC for 11 years, so I will always be a better writer than you.
The hipsters who have flocked to Brooklyn lately are the same ones who flocked to the East Village 15 years ago or to Soho 20-25 years ago — once the prices skyrocketed. One thing about NYC that is astounding are the number of kids slumming it.
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