“There is something unique about New York, some quality, some matchless, pertinent combination of promise and despair, wizardry and counterfeit, abund“There is something unique about New York, some quality, some matchless, pertinent combination of promise and despair, wizardry and counterfeit, abundance and depletion, that stimulates and allows for a reckoning to occur – maybe even forces it. The city pulls back the curtain on who you are; it tests you and shows you what you are made of in a way that has become iconic in our popular culture and with good reason.”
When I was a teen, my parents would, on occasion, whisk me and my sister up to Toronto for weekend visits. Most of these trips revolved around theater tickets. We came from a pretty small suburban town. The first time I caught a glimpse of Toronto from the highway, I felt I was headed to a magical place. (I never felt the same when I first visited Disney World, by the way.) All the hustle and bustle, the big glass buildings, the shops and restaurants, Chinatown, Little Italy, Greektown, and all the other neighborhoods, the museums, the theaters – the whole bit – dazzled me. I knew after just a trip or two that I wanted to live right there. Well, I never did pack up and move there (yet!); but I completely understand what the contributors of this book felt when they speak of love at first sight for New York City!
“On that first afternoon, we emerged into a rippling current of bodies. I froze, struck dumb by the summer heat, the smells of garbage, cigarette smoke, and roasting nuts. I looked up at the sliver of sky and ahead at the sea of faces and experienced the only kind of love at first sight that I believe in.”
Okay, well maybe not the smell of garbage, but I get it! I really enjoyed reading an essay or two before bedtime. There are thirty contributors in all; some names I recognized (Roxane Gay, Ann Hood, Lisa Ko) and others I did not (Rayhane Sanders, Rosie Schaap, Lauren Elkin). All have certain things in common: all are writers, all are women and each arrived in the city to later leave it behind. Some left in tears, perhaps to later return, while others left with a feeling of relief and even a wave of happy riddance. Each woman had the stamp of the city indelibly marked on her soul.
“… for the rest of our lives, our relationships to cities will be defined by New York.”
I loved some of the essays more than others, of course. Many of them urged me to look up more work by these authors, adding titles to my already toppling pile of books. I highlighted pieces that caught my attention that I’d like to share in the authors’ own words:
Roxane Gay on diversity: “More than anything, New York was seeing people, so many different people, so many beautiful shades of brown, so many different voices, a place where my brothers and I could actually see reflections of ourselves in others, where we didn’t feel so strange in a strange land.”
Chloe Caldwell on strangers: “I had this thing for strangers – the stranger the better – for train wrecks, and for grit. I liked the dirty parts of cities, though I didn’t realize that then. I wanted to be as out of my element as I could be. I wanted to talk to everyone and anyone. I sat on bar stools for hours.”
Dani Shapiro on leaving: “My city – the one that beckoned just beyond the smokestacks and Budweiser plant – has vanished. Only glimpses of it remain, in the sandstone façade of a Fifth Avenue building, or Washington Square Park, when seen from a certain angle. My city broke its promise to me, and I to it. I fell out of love, and then I fell back in – with my small town, its winding country roads, and the ladies at the post office who know my name.”
Lauren Elkin on creativity: “Unlike John Cheever or A.M. Homes, I don’t find the suburbs flint the creative spark. I’m more interested in what happens when people go other places, in the profound exchange that can occur between person and place when the two are foreign to each other.”
Hope Edelman on romance: “… no man could compete, in my mind, with the lure of a summer night in Greenwich Village with the air still warm enough at midnight for sundresses and sandals, streetlights casting a silver glow on sidewalk diners sipping from glasses of dark wine at red-checkered tables, full taxis gliding beneath traffic lights flashing candy-colored cycles from green to yellow to red. All those years when I thought I wanted a man to love me, what I really wanted was the romance of being a writer in New York.”
Melissa Febos on space: “People who don’t love the city talk about the freedom of the country and its wide open spaces; they marvel at how one could live in so cramped and crowded a space. But I always felt free in Brooklyn. I found safety in its enclosures. The city let me relax into being myself. Being who I am in New York didn’t feel like an action I took – it just felt like living.”
If I had a complaint or two about the collection, one would be the lack of a male voice. This then leads to my second criticism, though slight – a few essays felt a bit similar to one another. With thirty different viewpoints, it would have been nice to get some male perspective thrown in the mix as well. I know this has something to do with the fact that the inspiration for this book came from Joan Didion’s essay titled “Goodbye to All That”. The editor of this work wished to focus on women writers in order to align more with Didion’s own experience of entering and leaving the city. Perhaps I should have read Didion’s essay first. But then again, I think it will be an even tastier treat to polish off my New York City immersion with that iconic piece! Overall, this was a fantastic way to spend some cold winter evenings – dreaming of another place I’d love to be right now.
“Discovering New York is like discovering a different color. Something you’ve never seen before that’s on par with both beauty and agony and looks both terrible and fantastic on everyone.”...more
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