Acknowledgements
The writing of a dissertation requires many personal advices, inspiring
conversations, cityscapes, etc. apart from a computer and a lot of books.
This list cannot be inclusive or hierarchic.
I want to thank my promotor, Prof. Dr. Kristiaan Versluys, for his
critical assessment of my writing, for his sharing of his expert knowledge on
the topic of my dissertation. I want to mention as well Prof. Dr. Bart
Eeckhout, who triggered the idea for this dissertation.
I want to thank my family: my parents, my brothers, my sister, and
their respective families. They have given me the warmth and values of the
nuclear family. They have been indispensable in the process of this
dissertation.
I want to express gratitude to my friends in Belgium and all over the
world. They have supported me mentally, physically, virtually and
electronically.
Finally, I would like to mention Clarita, mi vida. Eso es para tí.
Thank you for bearing with me.
Table of Contents
1. SUMMARY
1
2. INTRODUCTION
6
1. PRESENTATION OF THE SUBJECT: NEW YORK CITY
2. DEFINING THE CITY
3. URBAN GROWTH
4. READING AND REREADING THE CITY
7
8
10
12
3. MATERIAL, METHODS & RESULTS
15
A) ETHNICITY
B) DEPENDENCE
C) SPACE
D) SEX
E) VIOLENCE
16
29
47
61
74
4. CONCLUSION
82
APPENDIX I: SUMMARY OF LENS OCCURRENCE
94
APPENDIX II: AUTHOR’S SHORT BIOGRAPHIES
95
BIBLIOGRAPHY
100
PRIMARY BIBILIOGRAPHY
SECUNDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
IN PRINT:
INTERNET:
FILMS:
100
101
101
105
105
1. SUMMARY
During the past four months, when people were randomly inquiring about
my present state of being, I answered them simply: “I am working on my
dissertation.” The next question in the majority of the cases was the
following: “What is your dissertation about?” I found it each time harder
and harder to come up with a sufficient answer. My custom answer was
usually “New York, New York.” I had to agree with my conversational
partners that that does not really sound like a dissertation. What is it that I
want to say about New York City? Which thesis would yield an adequate
vessel in which I could mould and mix the reading and the research (and
subsequent results) I had been doing during the past year? I found myself
trapped in the same pool of indecision as Woody Allen in the opening scene
of his film Manhattan (1979):
“Chapter one.”
“He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion.”
Uh, no. Make that “He romanticised it all out of proportion.”
“To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town
that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes
of George Gershwin.”
Uh... no. Let me start this over.
“Chapter one.”
“He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything
else. He thrived on the hustle, bustle of the crowds and the traffic.
To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys
who seemed to know all the angles.”
Ah, corny. Too corny for a man of my taste. Let me... try and make it
more profound.
“Chapter one. He adored New York City. To him, it was a metaphor
for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of integrity to
cause so many people to take the easy way out... was rapidly turning
the town of his dreams...”
No, it’s gonna be too preachy. I mean, face it, I wanna sell some
books here.
“Chapter one. He adored New York City, although to him it was a
metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to
exist in a society desensitised by drugs, loud music, television, crime,
garbage...”
Too angry. I don’t wanna be angry.
1
“Chapter one. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved.
Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a
jungle cat.”
I love this.
“New York was his town and it always would be.”
Of course I am not writing a novel and I am not trying to sell books here,
but like Allen I am trying to state a thesis about New York City. My thesis is
the process toward the stating of an actual thesis. This text is an attempt at
comparing sociological, non-fictional data to what I have found in fictional
work like films and short stories on New York City. Not only will it be
possible to compare data, but the comparison will also consist of new
perspectives, opening possibilities for new comparisons and hypotheses. It
will appear so that those instances taken from the short stories can be
compared to and analyzed by means of sociological facts on New York City
as an urban environment. This text will furthermore deliver fitting material
for further and more precise research on the city as a sociological space, but
also as a literary space.
This dissertation tackles subjects in the fields of literature, urban
studies and sociology. It draws on sociological sources on the one hand, and
short stories and films on the other hand. As such, this dissertation is a
comparative literature study, which combines several fields of research and
study that more and more are brought together: the hard facts of
sociological research with data taken from fictional work such as literature
and film. It will become clear that those givens are strongly intertwined, and
that useful conclusions can be drawn when fiction and non-fiction are
compared to each other.
2
In the introduction I will elaborate on the nature of the two basic
poles from which I want to start and which I described shortly above.
Where did I come across those data? How and where did they originally
appear? Why and how would I want to interlink them? Those will be the
major questions to deal with in the introduction. The data will be framed in
their authentic setting, which is absolutely necessary for a good reading and
understanding.
In the material, methods and results chapter, the main idea is to
analyze a set of short stories in the light of sociological theories on
urbanism. The short stories will be read from five major perspectives which
I further on will call lenses, as these readings will yield five different
perceptions of the sociological content in those stories: dependence,
ethnicity, sexuality, violence and space. Those five lenses result from the
research and reading I have done in sociological articles and sources.
Accordingly, those lenses will be the parameters for mapping out the
fictional sociological content, and will serve as the gateways for comparing
hard facts to non-hard facts.
Finally, all this taken together should show us the way to a
meaningful conclusion, the final chapter of this dissertation. The
relationship between sociological hard facts, on the one hand, and fictional
depictions and perceptions, on the other hand, will lead us to focus on the
city as a space, where constant interaction is going on. Accordingly,
following a simple but effective legend, the analyses of the stories will be
put onto six blank maps of New York City: for each lens a map, plus a final
map presenting an overall image of the five lenses. The underlying thought
here is to bring about a visual means to clarify sociological problems
3
encountered in fictional data. When talking about real facts in real places, it
is always easier to treat them when they are visualized and as such made
more tangible and accessible, rather than to discuss those facts in plain text.
These maps will probably also turn out to be useful for comparison to
social exploration. We will see that some major dichotomies will arise from
the data: difference versus indifference, centre versus periphery, assimilation
versus isolation – fields of tension that can be retrieved in literature,
sociology as well as in urban studies. What is the connection between the
human body and the larger body of the city? How do all those bodies, and
bodies within bodies, cooperate and/or neglect to cooperate? How can we
relate this to sociological research? How do the problems in fiction apply to
real, non-fictional problems in an urban environment and vice versa? In
this respect, I cannot neglect to mention Franco Moretti’s Atlas of the
European Novel: 1800-1900 (1998) as a major source of inspiration for the
idea of mapping out literary contents. Moretti’s book makes literary content
visible on geographical maps, and although our subjects differ greatly, the
message and intention behind the efforts remain the same: “Making the
connection between geography and literature explicit, then – mapping it:
because a map is precisely that, a connection made visible – will allow us to
see some significant relationships that have so far escaped us” (Moretti: 3).
The samples used here (25 short stories) are certainly not a definitive
list. The conclusion, then, will not yield an ultimate analysis of the city
through literature. Analyzing literary content by sociological literature would
yield somehow tentative observations, because the sample (here) is not
representative in that I only analyze 25 short stories. The inclusion of a
third aspect of analysis – topography – allows for a second assessment of
4
the stories. The visualization of the stories on maps provides the
opportunity to compare a literary map (like Moretti’s) to actual, sociological
data. We will be able to conclude in what sense the literary loci gathered
through the analysis of literary representations of the city connect to the
factual loci that sociological research has yielded.
Ultimately, an unusual but useful view of the city both as a
sociological and literary space will emerge. It follows from this introduction
that “New York, New York: Rereading the city through socio-literary
lenses” is both a referential as well as a self-referential work, in a way that it
functions as communicator and mediator between various fields of study,
which nevertheless scrutinize the same subject: the city.
5
2. INTRODUCTION
Instead of starting out with a descriptive part on the subject, New York
City, it might not be unwise to begin with the motivation for this
dissertation. How did I encounter the idea of writing a thesis on New York
City? Why would I tackle it the way I described it in the summary? Those
questions will be answered in this initial component of the introduction.
In the final year of my bachelor’s degree, I attended a series of
seminars on New York City in Literature, taught by Prof. Dr. Bart
Eeckhout. 1 This is where I first stumbled upon New York City, considered
from a literary angle. We briefly touched on the sociological nature of our
exercise, something one would not like to neglect, but it was not one of the
foundations of the course. We were mainly concerned with the
representation of the city as a city in literary materials. All short stories that
I will discuss in this context are taken from a list, which Bart Eeckhout first
offered to me in the course of that lesson series. Also the bulk of the films
that I will go into here come from these seminars.
When I first began to think about New York City as a possible topic
for a dissertation, Prof. Eeckhout accepted the task of being my promoter.
In the course of that process he moved to the University of Antwerp, after
which Prof. Dr. Kristiaan Versluys agreed to take over. As his interests and
expertise are directly concerned with American literature and urban studies,
his help and guidance have turned out to be an advantage for this project.
The sociological perspective derives from a postgraduate seminar on
urbanism, which I attended at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz,
1
Back then, he was a member of the English department at Gent University. Now he is a member of the
literature department at the University of Antwerp. He is also director of the master in American Studies
program, an inter-academic postgraduate course at four Belgian universities.
6
Germany. Professor Wolfgang Riedel 2 came up with a selection of
sociological articles on the phenomenon of ‘metropolitan areas’ – it is also
there that I learned how hard it is to denote the nature of a city like New
York City with one specific term. The focus in those seminars was not on
one city in particular, but touched on many cities in many different parts of
the world. It should not come as a surprise that the majority of those
articles and our in-class discussions have helped me on the way to this
dissertation. Therefore I am grateful for those two opportunities in the
course of my student career, which have triggered the process of what I
have been thinking and reading about for quite a while now.
1. Presentation of the Subject: New York City
After this initial outline of the motivation for focussing on New
York City, let us now consider the subject of my thesis in a more detailed
manner. New York City (officially called the City of New York) is the most
populous city in the United States of America. The city has one of the
highest cultural representation rates in the world. Therefore it is dual to
write a thesis on New York City: on the one hand the city is known by an
enormous mass of people, on the other hand the information that they have
on the city can and will highly differ from person to person. Hence for a
good understanding I will restrict myself here to provide a general but
absolutely necessary overview of the city’s key features.
The city is divided up into five boroughs (The Bronx, Brooklyn,
Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island) and has a population of 8.1
million within a land area of 321 square miles (830 km²), making it the
most densely populated city in North America. New York City has
2
Apl. Prof. Dr. Phil. Wolfgang Riedel is researcher and teacher at the English and Linguistics department and at
the Anglophone cultures department of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany.
7
been a centre of the world’s financial system since World War II and
home to many of the world’s most influential stock markets and
financial institutions. In addition, it is the birthplace of many
American cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in
literature and visual art, abstract expressionism in painting, and hip
hop in music. The city’s cultural vitality has been fuelled by
immigration since its founding by Dutch settlers in 1623. In 2005,
36.6% of the city’s population was foreign born. New York City is
also notable for having the lowest crime rate and the highest tax
burden among the ten largest American cities (Wikipedia).
This is already a more workable description of New York City as a
phenomenon than the one Woody Allen provided us with in the opening
scene of Manhattan (see summary). Questions that arise in this respect
revolve around the city as a concept. What is a city defined by? What are the
boundaries of the city? Where does the city begin, and where does it end?
2. Defining the City
The city and the concept of urban(ism) (which is an abstraction) are
interrelated. City boundaries are determined by the concept of the urban
and as in many cases, practice precedes theory. We may in fact consider the
city to be an administrative definition that places a boundary on a
contiguous urban area. Producing a suitable definition therefore is difficult,
since urban is defined differently across administrative and national
boundaries. Some interrelated factors are population size, population
density, space, economic and social organization, economic function, labour
supply and demand, administration (Frey and Zimmer: 25). We will not
have to deal with the difficulty of divergent definitions across political
boundaries for we focus on one city only. We will strive, however, to
develop an original definition of the urban within the specific context of the
8
interrelatedness between literature and social studies. The aforementioned
interrelated factors will play a significant role in that process.
As Zachary Zimmer and William H. Frey argue, it is essential for
any definition of the concept of the urban to differentiate between the
urban and the non-urban part of the system where people happen to live in
(Zimmer and Frey: 26). They distinguish three meaningful elements
between the rural and the urban character of a settlement system.
First, what is considered to be urban? An important element in
answering this question is population size and density. They have called this
the ecological element. Here already, nations differ greatly from each other.
In the USA areas with populations of 2,500 or more are considered urban,
whereas in Denmark 250 or more is the criterion.
Second, what function does the urban area have? What kinds of
activities take place within the area? Frey and Zimmer have denoted this
element economic in nature. Urban economic activity revolves around nonagricultural production, but in return educational, political, administrative
and socially related economic activities take place. An important related
concept is that of ‘agglomerative economies’. This concept denotes a
concentration of economic functions such as banking, crediting,
transportation and storage facilities, which are usually associated with the
very nature of the city center. There is no place anymore for these kinds of
economies in the city center because of space shortage. Agglomerative
economies lead to a deconcentration of the population, which in turn leads to
commuting and an expansion of the original urban area.
Ultimately, there exist differences between the way rural and urban
people live, their behaviour, their values, their perceptions and the way they
9
interrelate. Zimmer and Frey have called this the social element in defining
the urban concept. The term urbanism is most often used in this context,
that is referring to the way people live in urban areas.
Zimmer and Frey have observed two significant tendencies in
distinguishing urban areas on the basis of social organization (Zimmer and
Frey: 27). First, most often in developing countries people who migrate
from rural areas to an urban environment tend to maintain rural traditions
in their way of life. On the contrary, in developed countries, people living in
rural areas take on characteristics coming from the city. These tendencies
clearly form a blur and even an obstruction in undertakings to define the
city. The necessity to make a distinction between the urban and the rural
stems exactly from purposes involving policymaking, statistics and research.
This is not the discussion we want to go into here, but we needed to outline
the field wherein the city as a concept is usually named. The elements one
would like to remember are size, density, function and degree of urbanism.
3. Urban Growth
With a population of 18.7 million, the New York metropolitan area is one
of the largest urban areas in the world (U.S. Census Bureau: 2005). 3 One
should clearly keep in mind here the difference in growth between the
developing world and the developed world. According to Sassen in her
seminal Cities in a World Economy (1994), there are some major recent trends
to be detected in urban growth. One of them is the following: in the
developing world we note a continuing growth of mega cities, while in the
3
U.S. Census Bureau. Annual Estimates of the Population of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas:
April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2005. Retrieved on 2006-08-31.
10
developed world there is a renewed strength of some major cities with
concentration of economic activity, but also a decrease in importance of
other major cities. This observation is similar to what Zimmer and Frey
have detected as obstructions in defining the city as a concept.
In 1955, New York was the only agglomeration in the world with a
population surpassing 10 million. In the top ten populations of that same
period, only two could be referred to as being cities from less developed
countries: Buenos Aires and Shanghai. In 1975, three more cities in less
developed countries make it to the list: Mexico City, Sao Paolo and Beijing.
By 1995, the number of cities situated in more developed countries is
restricted to three. These statistics convincingly support the claims Sassen,
Zimmer and Frey have made (United Nations: 1995). 4
In these times of globalization one cannot neglect to take on a
global perspective when studying such a universal concept as the urban
area. It is commonly known that since 2006, for the first time in human
history, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. This
does not only mean that the city gains importance as subject of study and
research, it also brings about some significant changes for the people living
in cities. As Saskia Sassen argues, this watershed moment in our history
brings about new inequalities among and within cities (1994: 29).
(Sub)Urbanization, social segregation, race relations, crime investigation,
governance, planning, discourse, etc will recur in the following chapters as
the issues to study for cities in the 21st century. Those inequalities also
reflect the five lenses through which the city will be scrutinized throughout
this text.
4
These statistics are taken from the United Nations Population Division’s 1994 Revision of Estimates and
Projections of Urban and Rural Populations and of Urban Agglomerations.
11
The growth of global markets for finance and specialized services,
the reduced role of governments in the regulation of international economic
activity and the increased importance of global markets and corporate
headquarters all indicate a raised intensity and volume of transactions
among cities (Sassen, 1994: 42). Therefore cities become more and more
global systems of settlement. The migration of economies implies a similar
movement on the demographical level. The study of these relatively new
phenomena appears to be a major challenge for researchers and policy
makers these days.
4. Reading and Rereading the City
In sections 2 and 3 I have tried to define the city from a sociological, at
times even from an economical, point of view. Now it is time to introduce
the city as a literary character, and to relate this perspective to the
previously discussed angles. I will present here the dual character of the city
which I will further elaborate in following chapters: difference versus
indifference, centre versus periphery, assimilation versus isolation, freedom
versus restriction, alienation versus inclusion.
In “Impartial Maps: Reading and Writing Cities” (1996), Hana
Wirth-Nesher gives an overview of what has already been written on the
urban, and in particular refers to the different attempts to define the
essential characteristics of the urban as a concept.
The German School (including Max Weber, Georg Simmel and
Oswald Spengler) associates, on the one hand, the city with alienation. The
existence of communities within communities, like cities within cities,
assembles and refuses groups of individuals. The lenses of dependence and
12
ethnicity deal precisely with these matters. On the other hand, the city
offers freedom and space for the development of the individual through
impersonality. The urban space basically consists of two components: the
physical and the mental space. Henri Lefebvre cautions that the duality of
mental and physical space blurs transparency in representations of the city
(1991). The choice for a space lens derives from observations like
Lefebvre’s.
While in the past, there have been some attempts to arrive at a set of
universal determinants of the legibility of the city – Kevin Lynch, The Image
of the City (1971) – the focus has shifted from the identification of such
universal features to the reader, i.e. different readings of the city coexist
(Wirth-Nesher: 53). Hence, in this dissertation there is the deliberate choice
to work with different lenses in order to obtain an image of the city that
consists of different readings.
Wirth-Nesher argues that “when it comes down to cultural models
of the city based on literary representation, the impulse has often been to
identify an essence of urbanism” (53). She offers as examples Walter
Benjamin and Franco Moretti. Whereas Benjamin stresses the paradoxical
notion of “the city as a ceaseless shock” (Wirth-Nesher: 53), Moretti
emphasizes that “city life mitigates extremes” (53). Whether these
observations are correct is not the issue here. The fact that these theories
are grounded in an urban universe fashioned by particular readers is far
more useful than claims on universal applicability of urban experience. It is
in this spirit and tradition that this dissertation is written. The choice of the
lenses depends, thus, on what the fictional material under scrutiny here
represents: ethnicity, dependence, space, sex and violence. It is the literary
13
representation that yields the lenses, in the sense that the city is read by its
inhabitants through the stories they remember and invent.
Finally, this dissertation draws also on the attitude with which the
Ghent Urban Studies Team has written The Urban Condition: Space,
Community and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis (1999). This book’s central
question addresses the changes of urban space over time, and how this
process affected the life of city dwellers (15). As the stories under analysis
here range from the seventies until post 9/11, significant changes in the
lifestyle of the urbanite will be detected. Time, as such, is not a distinct lens
here. The way time has affected the city is reflected in the changes mapped
by the five thematic lenses.
14
3. MATERIAL, METHODS & RESULTS
In this chapter one can find analyses of the short stories that served as
literary data feeders. They are ranked chronologically and categorized
according to their main theme: the five themes which I discussed in the
summary and which will recur throughout this chapter as ‘lenses’:
dependence, ethnicity, sexuality, violence and space. Most of the stories
discussed here are not ‘pure’, as they cannot be read through one lens only.
One could argue that they are hybrid. The stories mostly tackle more than
one theme, which allows for several readings with different lenses. As it is,
some stories will recur under more than one theme.
At the end of each analysis, one will find a table. This chart is made
up out of five markers, referring to the lenses. The markers will be
attributed with a score on a scale from one to five, representing respectively
poor to high occurrence of that particular lens in a story.
In doing so, I will try to challenge De Certeau’s impossibility when
he talks about “ . . .the indefinable diversity of these operations of
utterance. They cannot be reduced to any graphic tracing” (1984: 108). The
goal of this research is not to reduce the story – the utterance – to a graphic
tracing. On the contrary it will widen the perspective from which we are
reading the story and from which our view on the city is determined. The
visualization of the stories, which will follow in this chapter, should then
only be viewed as a helpful means in analysing the story and the city, not as
a starting point. Eventually, these findings will be plotted onto a map of
New York City. In the conclusion, we will see the result of this
visualization.
15
A) Ethnicity
Ethnicity is a wide and much encompassing term. Basically ethnicity
denotes the fact that someone belongs to a particular ethnic group. What is
an ethnic group then? Again, there are no fixed boundaries to limit the
parameters for a particular ethnic group/ethnicity. ‘Ethnic’ chiefly relates to
a group of people who have the same culture and traditions (Darden: 179).
Wsevold Isajiw (1979:25), for example, defined the ethnic group as “an
involuntary group of people who share the same culture or the descendants
of such people who might identify themselves and/or are identified by
others as belonging to the same involuntary group.” Isajiw offers a rather
economical definition – and in defining such a wide concept, all prudence is
advisable – whereas the Canadian Board of Social and Economic Statistics
outline the concept more rigidly:
The concept of ethnicity is somewhat multidimensional as it includes
aspects such as race, origin or ancestry, identity, language and religion.
It may also include more subtle dimensions such as culture, the arts,
customs and beliefs and even practices such as dress and food
preparation. It is also dynamic and in a constant state of flux. It will
change as a result of new immigration flows, blending and
intermarriage, and new identities may be formed (2006).
Factors that thus complicate our comprehension of ethnicity are race,
culture, religion and ancestry. What we cannot overlook however, is the fact
those same factors are used in the construction of identity, if one may argue
that identity is constructed.
Another important fact, which concerns the material used in this
dissertation, is the establishment of New York City as a multi-cultural
16
society. Not only New York City for that matter is multi-cultural; the
majority of metropolitan cities in the western society are likewise multicultural (Sassen: 1991). In that sense, one can refer to the city as a multiethnic environment, in view of the multi-racial, multi-cultural and polyreligious nature of metropolitan cities. It should be clear, however, that
ethnicity by no means can be equated with race. Race is a fixed, biological
given, whereas ethnicity is a construct of several factors, which is involved
in the forming of identity. Race can be a part of that, but it is definitely not
a necessity.
Multi-ethnic environments imply per definition differences and
inequalities. Ethnic groups cannot be in perfect balance regarding
population. It is a sociological given that there will always be majorities and
minorities, unless one resides in a totalitarian regime – and even there, one
can argue that there will always be a majority of one: the dictator. The
challenge for a multi-ethnic society then consists in part of living together in
harmony, even though we should acknowledge the complexity of this
challenge. The intricacy of such an experiment is not the main focus of this
dissertation. Hence we will not go into this more deeply. The idea of
majorities and minorities will recur, however, when discussing ethnic
dominance.
It is possible that multi-ethnic groups could live in harmony. It is,
however, a fact that multi-ethnic societies often give rise to conflict, not in
the least to racial conflict (Darden: 182). To understand why conflicts occur,
one must explore the identity and behaviour of the dominant racial group.
Jenny Owen has written extensively on multi-ethnic societies. So
does her “The City and Identity” deal with the representations of the city
17
and its citizens in newspapers (Owen: 188). In the US, the relationship
between global and local cultures has been termed ‘melting pot’. The
Chicago School of predominantly Robert Park, Roderic McKenzie and
Ernest Burgess was seminal in this respect (Eriksen: 19). They performed
extensive research on how ethnic groups could guard their distinctive
identities and to what extent they did so over time. Robert Park thought the
city to have its own internal dynamics, creating diverse opportunities and
constraints for different groups and individuals, but also consisting of
different social groups that were subjected to a degree of mobility. This
mobility would stand for isolation, competition, conflict, accommodation
and assimilation (Eriksen: 19). In conclusion, Park argues that “every
society is a more or less successful melting pot where diverse populations
are merged, acculturated and eventually assimilated, at different rates and in
different ways, depending on their place in the economic and political
systems” (Eriksen: 19).
The Chicago School’s melting pot theory is thus a positivist theory,
in that it claims that diverse populations eventually will assimilate. This has
been refuted in a controversial study, Beyond the Melting Pot, by Nathan
Glazer and Patrick Moynihan (1963). In this work they documented the
extent to which various ethnic groups continued to manifest an ‘ethnic’
identity long after this identity would be expected to be assimilated by the
dominant ethnicity (Banks: 1969). They basically argue that the difference
stays exclusionary, rather than it becomes inclusive after a period of time.
Bharati Mukherjee’s “A Wife’s Story” (1988) offers the two
perspectives in one story. Panna, an Indian female immigrant, has been on a
scholarship in New York for two years now. She lives together in the rent-
18
controlled one-bedroom Chelsea apartment with Charity Chin, another
Asian immigrant, who personifies the American pursuit of success, as she is
a hands model. “Here, she’s a model with high ambitions. In India, she’d be
a flat-chested old maid” (30). The plot of the story revolves around the fact
that her husband comes to visit Panna for the first time since she has left
her home country. It will be his first time in the US. The discrepancy
displayed by the two protagonists yields a particular view of the American
Dream. Bhukerjee is not construing a critique on American society. She
rather functions as the seismograph that registers the cultural dichotomies
between different ethnicities. Panna and her husband taking a tourist trip
around Manhattan by bus show the city from a particular side. The space
that is represented is the typical way of portraying New York City to
tourists – the Manhattan skyline and its landmarks. This is a rendering of
the husband’s perspective, who, like a child, wonders at those magnificent
buildings. The experience that we perceive, however, is one of
disappointment (they have to stay on the bus all the time, they don’t go into
these famous buildings, the guide is a clown, “ ‘We made a foolish choice,’
my husband grumbles, ‘We are sitting in the bus only. We’re not going into
these famous buildings.’”(37)). Panna’s understanding differs from her
husband’s altogether: “I think, at least it’s air-conditioned in here. I could sit
here in the cool shadows in the city forever” (37). Exactly living in the city
has eroded Panna’s ideas and perspectives on the city, by becoming a part
of that larger body. Her husband, on the other hand, is enthusiastic, and
assimilates in no less than ten days to the American way of life: “The water
is running in the bathroom. In the ten days he has been here he has learned
American rites: deodorants, fragrances” (40). The discrepancy of course is
19
not a clear-cut opposition between two members of the same society,
because Panna is a citizen really living in NYC while the husband is only a
visitor, a tourist on his way back home. Panna’s home is his holiday
destination, and that is the problem if we try to analyse them through the
same lens of ethnicity. Panna’s ethnicity has indeed been changed – whether
it has been assimilated is another question – by living in the city.
Nevertheless, the echoes of Park and Glazer and their respective differing
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theories are reflected in these two characters.
In Jamaica Kincaid’s “Poor Visitor” (1992) we encounter
another visitor, as the title already suggests. Darden argues in his “Race
Relations in the City” that “Cities are merely organizational constructs
designed to accommodate the ideology of the dominant group” (177). Rose
even claims that “The ideology of white supremacy holds that in any
relations involving people of color, the white race must have the superior
position” (1969: 68). Darden introduces the term “white comfort zone”, an
environment in which the dominant white people do not feel threatened by
people of other color(s).
By recounting her dream, the Antiguan maid confuses her white
employers, and as such she invades the white comfort zone. According to
her ethnicity however, only important people appear in her dreams. In her
home country, people hearing this dream would have been honored if they
20
appeared in her dream. Her white American employers experience this as a
threat. The difference in ethnicity has caused a communication conflict.
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Kincaid’s story is about immigration – how difficult it is to adapt to
a completely different society and hence culture, how sad it is to be lonely
although living in a family. Immigration though has also its good sides:
there is a refrigerator, there is fresh food. With regards to hygiene this
experience means a huge improvement for this immigrant. Immigrants are
dependent for all kinds of things, and for the primary things first. The
Freudian dream at the end of the story is significant in this respect: she feels
already attached to this family that she has barely known for a couple of
days.
It is not a sinecure for immigrants to integrate because often they
are cast in unequal housing or labor situations (Darden: 178), like “Poor
Visitor” shows as well. It is not a sinecure for people of color to overthrow
white supremacy for that matter, when it comes down to housing or jobs.
Walter Mosley’s “Pet Fly” (1999) revolves around the complexity
that people of color experience in trying to put an end to white supremacy.
It is significant to note that even if inequality in ethnic population – in
whichever circumstances – can supply the premises for ethnic conflict, first
there has to be ethnic awareness on the part of the minority group. That
21
awareness will be responsible for actions on the minority’s behalf to
improve their living, housing, working conditions, etc. The majority
however might interpret these actions as threatening the white comfort
zone, and, as such that majority will try to establish their supremacy. In
doing so, the dominant group is likely to proceed to acts of discrimination.
Darden says that
Although forms of blatant discrimination have been outlawed
in each country, a second more subtle form of discrimination
is increasingly apparent. This type of discrimination, which is
practised in Britain and the USA, can be referred to as
institutional racism. (178)
Institutional racism is what Ernie and Rufus experience in “Pet Fly”.
Institutional racism is consequently not overt racism between white people
and people of color. It uses the titles and positions that are already
institutionalised – like Mr. Drew’s managerial position – to suppress the
lower positions, which in most of the cases happen to be filled by people of
color.
Besides the ethnicity issue, we also get to know Rufus’ housing
situation. We learn that his rather autistic behavior on the work floor can be
traced back to his precarious living conditions in Washington Heights,
Brooklyn.
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22
The housing situation will reappear in the “Space”-section, where it
will be dealt with more profoundly. There are, however, a few issues that
need to be highlighted in the light of the ethnicity lens. “Racial residential
segregation is a tool in which the dominant white population excludes
people of color in cities from the benefits of society” (Darden: 185).
Darden in his “Race Relations in the City” has computed a table, which
indicates the degree of residential segregation for three ethnic groups in the
USA (table 11.1 Racial residential segregation indices in the largest metropolitan areas,
1990: 186). The three ethnic groups are blacks, Asian/Pacific islanders and
Hispanics. The results show that blacks are the most segregated from the
white population, “with an average level of segregation of 66 per cent
compared with 42 per cent for Hispanics and only 38 per cent for
Asian/Pacific Islanders” (Li, et al.: 1995).
In “Seven” by Edwidge Danticat (2001), a young Haitian woman
travels from Haiti to New York to rejoin her husband after seven years
apart. What we get here is the housing situation of people of the Caribbean,
who are not taken up in Darden’s table.
The wife stays unnamed throughout the story, which clearly hints at
the anonymity that goes with every immigrant experience. It is useful to
note as well that this story is the exact inversion of Mukherjee’s “A Wife’s
Story”, albeit that gender roles have been swapped. Here too, ethnicities
will clash – the already altered ethnicity of the Americanized husband and
the still dominantly Haitian ethnicity of the wife. Here however we will
focus on their housing situation.
There is a link between ethnicity and housing situation, viz. the one
of ethnic segregation. People of different ethnicity than that of he
23
dominant white population are imprisoned in a way that they are forced to
live in the same areas of the city, often in precarious housing conditions,
often in overpriced shabby lodgings (Darden: 187). The danger is that these
forms of suppression tend to transform in ghettoization – something that
European Jews experienced at the end of the 1930s.
The story ends with a silent agreement to imagine that everything
will work out eventually. It is as if they rely upon the city to accept them for
who they are, and what they stand for, separately and together. It is the
image of the city as the stepmother who is prepared to adopt orphans
whose homes have disappeared.
The anonymity of the protagonist is something we find back in
Abraham Rodriguez Jr.’s “The Boy without a Flag” (1992). The boy is
clearly confused about his identity. He has inherited the Latino ethnicity of
his father, but he was born in America, where different cultures have been
influencing him.
The will to disobey derives directly from his Latino origins, although
the narrator is USA citizen. Finally, this is also a story about disillusionment:
the boy’s father in the end does not stand up for his son’s (and his own)
ideals. Somehow, the American way of life seems to have eroded his
idealism.
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24
Mike Davis wrote Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City, a
book (2001) about interethnic tensions in the USA, exactly what “The Boy
without a Flag” is about. In 1996 Latinos surpassed blacks as the second
largest ethno-racial group in New York City after whites. Davis talks about
the invisibility of Latinos in urban studies (26). There seems to be a black
and white vision only. When the Rodney King riots in 1992 were covered in
the media, Latinos taking part in the protests were virtually ignored.
Uprisings by Latino students are not interesting for the media, whereas
uprising by black or white students are. In New York City there is an
ongoing exchange between all the Spanish-speaking and Caribbean-origin
communities. Davis states that fully half of the marriages in New York City
are intermarriages between different Latino nationalities. Silvio TorresSalient even affirms, “we have come to articulate a collective identity, not in
our native homelands . . . but within the insecure space of the diaspora”
(35). “The Boy without a Flag” does not really lend itself to analysis through
this theory. The problem lies within the perspective of the narrator, who is a
12-year-old boy. He is still in the process of identifying himself within a
given society (I deliberately do not use the phrase ‘constructing an identity’),
whereas his adult father and teachers have defined themselves already
within a society that ethnically was not their original habitat.
Davis provides us with a typology of Latino Urban Areas: 1. Primate
barrio with small satellites (L.A. in 1960); 2. Polycentric barrios (Chicago
1990); 3. Multi-cultural mosaic (N.Y.C. 1990) and 4. City-within-a-city (L.A.
1990) (52). At the time when Rodriguez Jr. wrote this story (1992), New
York City was perceived as a multicultural mosaic (which also happens in
the other stories in this section). “In contrast to L.A., which has many
25
barrios and smaller, incorporated cities with Spanish-surname populations
in excess of 90 per cent, all of New York’s Latino neighborhoods have
large, non-Latino minorities of 30 to 45 per cent” (Davis: 53). This
observation confirms Darden’s statistics on Hispanic segregation we saw
earlier on.
Latinos from the new working-class (mainly blue collar jobs) have
replaced, not displaced, native-born people with regard to their jobs. Davis
even asserts that there is an ethnic division of labor to be noted (83-93).
Whites have privileges in the private sector: management, entertainment
and industry. Asians are to be found in private professions and light
manufacturing, and finally Latinos engage in blue-collar occupations. These
are, of course, trends, and not definitive categories, and we should be
careful with socio-economic demarcations between the rich dominant
ethnic group and the poor minor ethnic group.
The final story in this section deals with religion as a facet of
ethnicity, a factor we have not encountered in the previous stories The
protagonist is thus a member of the dominant ethnic group. He
characterizes already one feature, which Davis observed concerning
employment: he has a white-collar job in the private sector (2001: 91).
Some ethnic groups are inextricably linked to religion. Jews are by
far the largest group among ‘religio-ethnic’ groups, which include Greeks,
Amish and Hutterites among others. Religious differences between the host
society and the intruding new religions are highlighted by cultural and
linguistic differences. But even within religious Jewry, there are manifold
differences to be detected. Cecil and Irene Roth wrote a book on the
26
differences within Jewry and between the various kinds of Jewishness
(1974).
First, there are the geographic differences resulting from their
diverse geographical origins in Europe. When neo-Semite Charles Morton
Luger sits down to his first dinner equipped with his new soul, he discovers
that “half an hour Jewish and already he felt obliged. He knew there were
dietary laws, milk and meat forbidden to touch, but he didn’t know if
chicken was considered meat and didn’t dare ask....And so, a Marrano in
modern times, Charles ate his chicken like a gentile--all the while a Jew in
his heart” (100). Marranos were Sephardic Jews (Jews from the Iberian
peninsula) who publicly professed Roman Catholicism, but privately
adhered to the traditions of Judaism. The Sephardic Jews were the first
immigrants in the USA, followed by Ashkenazic Jews from Germany and
finally Jews from all over Eastern Europe (Roth and Roth: 1974).
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The extract in which Charles hesitates on eating chicken also proves
“the subtle dimensions” of ethnicity in the definition of ethnicity by the
Canadian Board of Social and Economic Statistics, such as “dress and food
preparation”(2006). In a certain way, this story even shows the experience
of an immigrant. Charles has arrived in a new religious home. As in other
immigrant stories, it appears that those small practicalities like food, clothes,
or even a normal (from a Western viewpoint) refrigerator (“Poor Visitor”)
27
are the most important in establishing a sense of ‘home’ – in assimilating
ethnic customs to the host culture.
28
B) Dependence
This section is concerned with the relationships between people living in
the city. How do people connect in the city? Where do they find their peers,
and if they find them, how does this process come about? Do people
depend on the city to live in the city – and if so, what does that dependence
consist of? Community, difference, indifference and social logic will be key
terms in bringing this topic to light.
“Whatever its precise nature, it leaves open the question of whether
the city is (or can be) an imagined community” (195). With this phrase in
the introduction of his “Communities in the City”, Ronan Paddison shapes
the main conundrum of city life. Over time, the meaning and connotation
of “community” has altered. Living in a community evolved as societies
developed from rural into industrial economies, thus giving rise to the
specific urban space. Again Robert Park of the Chicago School was one of
the first to come up with a description. In his definition, community meant
“the means by which the individual was able to develop a sense of
belonging and identity with at least a part of the city” (Paddison: 194). Later,
the definition was rather concerned with the organization of social behavior
within the city.
Different territories and interests give rise to multiple meanings as
bases of definitions, but various possibilities may also point to the
paradoxical character of the combination of community and city life.
On the one hand, Georg Simmel detected already more than
hundred years ago that city life is alienating. In his “Die Grosstädte und das
29
Geistesleben” (1903) 5, he argued that in the city social relations decline in
qualitative respect. Since cities were originally designed for trading, city
dwellers often perceive of each other as competitors. They are reserved or
even hostile towards each other. Social encounters are shorter and the first
impression becomes more important, since one has less time to convince
other persons. Urbanites enjoy more freedom than the rural population
because the city is more anonymous and, as a result there are fewer societal
expectations. However, freedom should not be equated with well-being.
City dwellers feel often alone and abandoned although they have a lot of
acquaintances. The pace of city life implies a superficiality that is alien to the
rural lifestyle.
On the other hand, communities act as a “cushion” (Paddison: 195)
to the alienating nature of city life. The paradox consists thus of the
question of the existence of communities in the city and the alienation of
city life.
Bernard Malamud’s “The Model” (1983) illustrates the alienation
and anonymity in New York City. The story’s protagonist Ephraim Elihu is
70 years old and lives “in a brownstone house near Ninth Avenue” (590).
As a widower and father of a dead daughter, Ephraim lives alone in his
spacious downtown house with “a back yard with an ailanthus tree whose
leaves had just come out” (591). In his desperateness to meet people, he
contacts the Arts Students League and presents himself as a painter – which
he is not. Via the Arts Students League he is able to set up a meeting with a
model in his house – his so-called studio. His loneliness has driven him so
far that he sees no other options for meeting women than hiring them
5
Translation by H.H. Gerth with the assistance of C. Wright Mills (1950)
30
under the cover of a nude study. The city, as in the Arts Students League,
offers him the opportunity, which he grabs with both hands: the access to
diversity in the city offers possibilities unknown to the rural lifestyle.
The model sees through him and challenges him as a pervert and
then she turns the tables by making him the model. Ephraim is ashamed of
himself and his body, and he now knows what the model must have felt like
when she saw through his sham.
After she leaves, he is confronted with his shame and sadness: “Is
there nothing more to my life than it is now? Is this all that is left to me?
(592). The confrontation is one that Ephraim evoked himself – all the more
reason to read this story through the lens of dependence. The protagonist is
met head-on by his necessity to meet other people, to socialize, and at the
same time by his very incapability of doing that. The city in all its
proportions and massiveness cannot provide Ephraim with a simple
conversation. It seems easier for him to take the phone and make a phoney
appointment than to get actually outdoors in order to encounter
conversational partners. As we have seen before, city life can take on
features of captivity.
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Another claim by Simmel is that urbanites (as in people living in a
city) strike a more intellectual pose than people from rural areas (1903). This
31
claim nowadays is probably no longer valid, although the consequence that
Simmel attaches to this observation is still convincing. City life,
characterized by unexpected changes and the absence of routine, stimulates
nervous synapses more than life in the countryside, which is said to be
slower and more regular (in the conclusion, Barthes’ theory on the ‘imagistic
corridor’ will confirm this observation of urban pace and diversity). Simmel,
therefore, believes that urbanites are more intellectual than people from
rural areas. Simultaneously, the accumulation of nervous strains leads to socalled “blasé attitude” 6 (51).
The essence of the blasé attitude consists in the blunting of
discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived,
as is the case with the half-wit, but rather that the meaning and
differing values of things, and thereby the things themselves, are
experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blasé person in an
evenly flat and gray tone; no one object deserves preference over
another (52).
The constant changes irritate the human nerves to an extent that they stop
reacting and become insensitive, and in the end even indifferent. This is an
observation that is persuasive, because it is exactly the difference and/or
diversity of things (“Die Unterschiede der Dinge”) that causes indifference.
However, in the conclusions Richard Sennett will respond to this
(difference provoking indifference) as a sociological truism. For now, two
stories will illustrate each viewpoint.
“You’re Ugly, too” by Lorrie Moore (1989) is the story of Zoë
Hendricks. A reading of this attitude with Simmel’s concept of
“Blasiertheit” is plausible, especially in the context of a New Yorker who
moved to the Midwest – from the urban to the rural.
6
Blasiertheit
32
She talks with her younger sister Evan – who still lives in New York
– every Tuesday on the phone and visits her regularly. The weekend of
Halloween, too, Zoë visits her sister, who throws a Halloween party in her
“luxury midtown high rise with a balcony and access to a pool” (207). “ ‘I
keep forgetting how nice this apartment is. Twenty-first floor, doorman…’
Zoë could work her whole life and never have an apartment like this. So
could Evan. It was Charlie’s apartment” (207). Clearly, this contrasts Zoë’s
empty house in the Midwest, and shows how the dependence issue is
related to having a space of your own in the city. This story deals exactly
with the duality of dependence versus independence. Zoë symbolizes the
independent career huntress who has on the way grown lonely. Evan stands
for the exact opposite – she lives in the city but at the cost of her
independence.
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In effect, Zoë Hendricks is a character who suffers from loneliness
but does not have the communicational or social skills to escape that state, a
predicament that is, of course, self-generating: the more she fails to
communicate, the lonelier she gets. The Halloween party does not change
her for that matter. She has been talking all night with Earl on the balcony,
a bachelor who Evan tries to get interested in her sister.
33
Elizabeth Hardwick’s “Shot: a New York Story” (1993) is set in the
Upper East Side of Manhattan. Zona, the protagonist on whom the third
person narrator focalises, is a maid “up the brownstone side streets of the
Seventies and the Nineties” (454). Zona is black, and lives in the Bronx.
The people living in the Seventies and Nineties (referring to street numbers)
are wealthy and white, “a decorator; a partner in an old-print shop; a flute
player, female; and a retired classics professor, who liked to sit reading in a
wheelchair” (455). Everyday Zona commutes between her house in the
Bronx and her job on the Upper East Side with Martin, her chauffeur. It
might come across as weird, the fact that Zona has a driver, but this too is
an excerpt of the excellent relationship between Zona and her employers.
Over time, Zona’s employers have learned to appreciate her qualities, and as
a result have rewarded her with a chauffeur.
One morning, a boy rings at one of the addresses where Zona
works to say that “Zona has passed away” (456). The boy is Carlos, the son
of Zona’s sister. The sisters do not have the money to make arrangements
for Zona. What we perceive here is a form of dependence, on money.
Joseph, the partner in the old-print shop who has employed Zona for
fifteen years – “a long time for New York, I guess” (458) – is shocked, and
gives Carlos 200 dollars. Joseph’s aside on the length of their bond reveals
the unusual nature of their dependence. He and Zona have built a
relationship, starting probably from what is called in sociological literature
metropolitan contingency. The possibilities for bonding are much higher in
the city than in a rural environment. Nevertheless, the opportunities
offered by the city still have to be seized by its inhabitants. Over the years,
more positive theories have been developed on the social logic in
34
metropolitan cities, in contrast with Simmel’s rather bleak viewpoint (I will
take this up further on with Schiffauer and Young). As such, in this story,
Zona has taken that chance with both hands, resulting in an agreeable work
environment and at the same time giving rise to mutual dependence.
“Tell me what happened to Zona. That is, if you don’t mind.
Zona was shot, Carlos said” (460). Zona and her driver were brutally shot one
night for no particular reason. The few dollars they both kept in their
wallets were taken, while they were left in the car. “History of this goddam
city – at least a footnote to the history of these fucking times” (461).
Since Zona’s family had not been able to make arrangements, Zona
was being kept in a morgue: “With the city down where they keep them”
(463). What happens with such bodies when the family cannot take care of
them? They go to Potter’s Field. The New York City Cemetery, located on
Hart Island, the Bronx, in the Long Island Sound, is commonly referred to
as Potter’s Field. The probable origin of the term “Potter’s Field”, meaning
a public burial place for poor and unknown persons, is a passage from the
Gospel of St. Matthew (27:3-8) 7. So, even when one is dead in New York,
one can depend on the city to preserve a space for oneself.
Potter’s field contrasts remarkably well with a final observation on
this story. When Tony, the decorator, visits Cynthia, the flute player – both
former employers of Zona – he marvels at her house and the interior
decoration. “They like to gut the place, break down walls, even move the
staircase so they can put a powder room under it. Space, dear lady, that’s the
ticket. Space is what you have to sell” (464). The two lenses we have applied
7
"Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the
thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests ... and they took counsel, and bought with them the potters field to bury
strangers in."
35
on this story finally merge with its linking element: money. Dependence
(relationships) and space (housing) are paid cash in the city. When cash fails,
violence takes over and leaves the body to the city.
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Money is an issue that Simmel addresses as well in his seminal text
on the mental life in urban space. He observed that cities are financial
centers. There is a strong correlation between the intellect and finance. Both
require objectivity in the treatment of people and objects. The production
in cities does not aim at the individual consumer but at the market (and as
such creating a ‘community of consumers’). There is no direct interaction
between the producer and the recipient, whereas in rural areas this is often
the case. There is a non-identification of man with the product, resulting in
alienating labor. Citizens are therefore much more rational and calculating
than their rural counterpart (Simmel: 1903).
The point is that money leads to uniformity. Money is used to
measure the value of objects that are actually unique and hence
incomparable. The measurement in money, however, levels their
peculiarities and the quantity becomes generally more important than the
quality. This facet of money links back to the declining quality of social
relations.
36
Sassen (1991) developed in this respect the concept of social
polarization: the growing income inequality is accompanied by a
polarization of occupational structure, which results from the shift to
manufacturing to financial and business services. Chris Hamnett (2001)
rejoinders Sassen and says that rather than polarized, the occupational
structure of Western capitalist societies becomes more professionalized.
Still, Zona in “Shot: a New York Story” lives in the Bronx, while her
wealthy employers live in posh brownstone buildings on the Upper East
Side. If not social polarization is illustrated by this story, than definitely we
can observe a form of spatial polarization.
Cities are subject to an ongoing process of changes, of confusion
and disorder, in some cases resulting in chaos. In his essay “Zur Logik von
kulturellen Strömungen in Grosstädten” Werner Schiffauer tries to detect
regularities and rules –the social logic – behind the veil of chaos (Fremde in
der Stadt, 1997). His efforts include approaches of other authors (Hannerz
and Bourdieu) and examples are Berlin, London, Paris and New York.
Schiffauer addresses the factors that shape urban culture, and why and in
which ways the cultural flows in city come about.
In Exploring the City (1980), Ulf Hannerz describes the city as a
network of networks, in which communication and culture are catalyzing
factors: culture is the expression of communicative processes. A group of
people who are separated from others, in a way that the demarcation
denotes a forced separation/grouping (e.g. colleagues at work, students at
the university, etc.), show a tendency to develop its own language, own
rituals, beliefs and material culture. Depending on how stable the group or
37
network is, those features become more or less outspoken and defined.
Examples of networks are family, work, traffic, clubs, etc.
A city is thus a network of groups, because in the city many of the
above mentioned groups meet, cross and overlap. According to Hannerz
this leads to two main reasons for the cultural flow: 1. access to diversity
and 2. diversity of access (Schiffauer: 93).
Access to diversity means that the individual has the opportunity to
meet peers, people sharing the same concepts, opinions or lifestyles, though
the peers can also provide new approaches and in that manner change the
individual.
Diversity of access, on the other hand, signifies that the individual is
participating in several cultures and social spheres. Hence, different cultural
fields are linked by the individual and in doing so, people are introduced to
new points of view, and new approaches will reach other cultural groups.
William Melvin Kelley’s “Carlyle Tries Polygamy” (1997) displays
access to diversity by its protagonist Carlyle Bedlow, an African American
male whose age is not specified. But we can deduce from the story that he is
in his mid-forties. He lives in Harlem, Lower Edgecombe Avenue. He is not
married, although the main theme in this story is, as the title already
suggests, polygamy. The city offers the protagonist a great variety and
diversity of women, and at the same time the anonymity to fulfil his
polygamous desires. The access to diversity creates the opportunity.
At the moment of the story, Carlyle commutes between Glora in the
Bronx, a sensual Latino woman, and Senegale in Brooklyn, a “chocolate
beauty and independent spirit” (352) and a strong believer in the Rastafarian
38
faith. To make things even more complicated, Carlyle has a daughter with
each of the women, respectively Carlotta and Mali. The triangular
relationship becomes even clearer when one visualizes the story by
indicating the respective residences of the characters on a map of New
York.
Both women demand the full attention of Carlyle, and he himself
feels safe only when he retreats into his sunny, cosy apartment in Harlem.
The solution to this dilemma in the end is that Senegale and Mali move in
with Glora and Carlotta in the Bronx, resulting in Carlyle losing his two lady
friends. When his brother visits, he assures him “that Carlyle has done the
honest, manly thing, brought out, everything into the open” (355).
On the one hand, we find a strong ethnic focus here: the melting
pot of three different ethnicities (African American, Latino and Jamaican)
trying to live together. Of course, this observation runs underneath the
more obvious dependence issue – in the end the male protagonist finds
himself locked out from what used to be his female possessions. On the
other hand, dependence and space are clearly visible and intertwined as well.
Both women are dependent on Carlyle for money for the kids, and in the
end, both women live together in one space, because Senegale can no
longer pay the rent for her Brooklyn apartment. Senegale’s situation is a fine
example of diversity of access. Through Carlyle, she has met Glora and
found a new way to cope with city life: Senegale’s network has been
enlarged by her relationship with Carlyle. In this network she has found new
friends (Glora, Carlotta), and a new place to live (the Bronx). Senegale’s
ways to cope with city life have been extended: a clear example of diversity
of access.
39
3
2,5
Ethnicity
2
Dependence
1,5
Space
1
Sex
0,5
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
Diversity of access is even more clearly illustrated in Jeffrey
Eugenides’ “Baster” (1996). Whereas Senegale underwent a more material
change in “Carlyle Tries Polygamy”, the narrator of “Baster” really adjusts
his point of view by accessing other groups in the city – if that is not the
case, Eugenides convincingly misleads the reader. The protagonist, 40-yearold Tomasina Genovese, lives in an “adult-sized”(427) apartment on
Hudson Street. She is single and childless. She is the stereotype of the career
woman who has invested too much and too long in her professional life.
She comes to conclude that her emotional life amounts to practically
nothing “when one day you pick up Mirabella and read, “after thirty-five, a
woman’s fertility begins to decrease” (428).
The narrator is Wally Mars, who used to date Tomasina somewhere
in the spring of 1985 (429). Like Tomasina, he makes a lot of money, and
he does not enjoy a flourishing emotional life, either. The network on the
job established their connectedness. One Friday, during a private dinner in a
restaurant, Tomasina informs Wally about her thinking about IVF – In
Vitro Fertilisation. Wally, secretly still having feelings for Tomasina tries to
talk her over. Tomasina, however, is determined and dismisses all of his
objections.
40
Wally cannot put the subject out of his mind. “The city wouldn’t let
me” (432). One day, Wally receives an invitation by Tomasina: “I’m getting
pregnant” (433). On the said party, the donor is presented, as is his sperm in
a small bottle on the central table. Wally takes away the bottle, does away
with its contents, and instead leaves his own semen in the recipient after a
bathroom session. The story ends ten months later, when Wally receives an
announcement stating that Tomasina has given birth to Joseph Mario
Genovese.
The story raises questions in the realm of dependence. Men are
dependent on women for children and vice versa, and this is clearly what
this story is about. Moreover, what we get here is a deliberate choice for
independence. It is a story about escaping from traditional and deeply
rooted dependences, and in that sense it creates possibilities for the
interpretation of the concept of dependence. Is dependence necessarily a
situation in which you need someone or something in order to live or
succeed? Or are there other possibilities? Tomasina, by her diversity of
access that is created by her wide networks, has the chance to do away with
restrictions and even obligations – a man – to fulfil her wish for a child.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
Schiffauer concludes that these two processes (access of diversity
and diversity of access) are linked (1997). They influence one another in that
41
they either accelerate or slow down patters of interaction. Schools and
media keep groups and networks from falling apart. They have a clustering
effect and help to build a mainstream. As a counteraction, the mainstream
undergoes tensions, opposing subcultures and peaks. Communities within
communities come into existence. They demarcate and define themselves
against other communities, like the mainstream itself is a community.
In 1982, Pierre Bourdieu analyzed the city as a social space of power
and culture, where culture was the cultivation of classes (Schiffauer: 1997).
Lifestyles and status are the bases for classification. In the context of this
dissertation, one can interpret Bourdieu’s class as community, as the group
an individual associates with. In doing so, we are back at the main question
of this section: do communities exist in the city?
Iris Marion Young observes that “appeals to community are usually
antiurban” (263). Paddison does not put it as strongly as Young, but he
does say that “it would be naïve to assume that cities are subdivided neatly
into discrete communities” (198). The community is set between
institutions of wider society (the city) and immediate surroundings.
Paddison refers to the Warrens (1977) who studied social life in American
neighborhoods. In their study, they identify three factors that can be used to
distinguish between different types of community: identity, interaction and
linkage (Paddison: 199). Gottdiener (1994) has interpreted these factors and
used them to come up with six types of communities:
1. interactive middle-class neighborhood; 2. anomic community; 3. diffuse
community; 4. transitory community; 5. ethnic (urban) villages and 6.
defended communities. Although it would be interesting to see how these
42
categories apply to the different stories under analysis here, we will highlight
only one of these communities more deeply, viz. the defended community.
Susan Sontag’s “The Way we Live now” (1986) deals with the
matter of defended community. The story is set in the mid eighties, when
AIDS was terrorizing gay communities, as the Plague once had done with
people in the Middle Ages. Although some characters are gay, the
protagonist is bisexual. He is the AIDS-patient, and as a result we get an
unusual perspective on the matter – in the sense that it is not the expected
victim’s perspective.
The protagonist is, as in previous stories, never named throughout.
The fact that the protagonist never gets named is, on the one hand, a device
to make the story more general – to show that the disease is widespread –
but, on the other hand, a means to shut off the protagonist from the rest of
the characters, who are named. As such, he is placed in a margin. He is
dependent on those who are not alike – his anonymity is clearly also a
marker of this inequality.
The friends and the protagonist form a group that can be identified
as a defended community. The defended community crosscuts the other
categories that Gottdiener defined, “particularly as the threats to them ebb
and flow” (Paddison: 200). The defense is necessary because destabilization
of community leads to destabilization of the self. A destabilization is exactly
what the protagonist experiences. He starts keeping a diary of his
experiences and feelings coping with the illness. The treatment has sideeffects. He is sent home from the hospital; Quentin is helping him
(cooking, taking calls). His “timing” is good because he is told that
43
researchers are developing a new cure right now. The protagonist is
constantly dependent on his friend to survive, to defend his life. His
increased immobility has led to an increased need for defense. This is what
happens at the surface, but between the lines we can read that the group is
falling apart, or at least polarizing.
The friends feel that they should pronounce the name of the
disease, as a sign that they can deal with it (but they never do). The narratorprotagonist talks a lot about those who visit him more often (there is an
imaginary list of who comes and who not). When he is home, some of his
acquaintances die. His friends feel that he should be informed, and so they
proceed to do so. He is afraid. They all tell he looks better than two weeks
ago, which is a white lie. Three weeks later, he is accepted in the protocol of
the new drug. At the end of the story, he is still alive.
Although AIDS and HIV are not specifically mentioned in the story,
it quickly becomes clear to the reader that this is the dreadful illness the
man has contracted. In fact, the disease is mentioned only in terms which
assume that AIDS is such an ubiquitous and dreaded presence at this point
that all one need say is: ‘‘... what makes you think the worst, he could be just
run down, people still do get ordinary illnesses, awful ones, why are you
assuming it has to be that” (298). The fear of a disease like AIDS (and the
threat that radiates from it) takes on such proportions that none of the
characters can even pronounce its name.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
44
The community in this story is presented with the dilemma between
inside and outside. Paddison states that “internal homogeneity is more myth
than reality” (201). The defense against the hostile and unpredictable threat
contains an exclusionary nature. This forms the real danger for the concept
of community. There is a potential for conflict as well as for harmony. As
we have seen in the stories, the appeal to community sometimes has a
divisive, and sometimes a protective function. As Paddison concludes:
“Rather, then, than abandon the notion of community, as earlier urban
analysts have suggested, providing there is adequate recognition given to its
complex and contested nature, it has continued (analytic) value in
understanding social life in late modern cities” (204).
45
46
C) Space
In the previous section, the city has been looked at as a social construction.
That social construction, however, is situated in a certain space. Hence there
is an argument for a view of the city as a social space. At the end of the
previous section, I presented the discrepancy between inside and outside:
categorizing identities inside or outside a particular group will always be a
hazardous enterprise. When people live in a same space, however, the very
fact of sharing space categorizes them as inside or outside. Also in this
section, as in the previous ones, differences (within and between) and the
notion of community (heterogeneity versus homogeneity), will prove to be
significant in the analysis of the stories. It should not come as a surprise,
then, that some stories deal precisely with these two topics that are
intertwined: space and dependence.
Space is a production of space occupants, which need not
necessarily be human beings. Space can be occupied by and consist of
material objects as well. Furthermore, the production of space can be
categorized in largely two fields: on the one hand, there is physical
production of space. In the urban area, physical production of space is
dominated by cultural presentation, whereas in rural areas, nature still
prevails in the physical reality of space. On the other hand, space can also
be a product of mental representation. The way people perceive space
depends on their understanding of the input they get, and of the political
value that they attach to the input.
Our common understanding of space is that it is simply there,
intangible but given. Attempts to fix it in language can quickly tumble
into tautologies and negations – not surprisingly, as we can think no
more outside of metaphorisations of space than we can live outside
its representations. To approach space as a social product, though,
47
prompts fresh considerations of the instrumentality of space as a
register not only of built forms but also of embedded ideologies
(Balshaw and Kennedy: 2).
In The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre argues that the discrepancy
between physical and mental space is joined exactly by the process of the
production of space (1991).
The analyses of the stories here, then, address a double perspective
of space. First, the focus of the stories themselves is on the representation
of space, just as in the previous sections their focus was on ethnicity and/or
dependence. Second, there is a meta-layer of focalization on the
representation of space, in that literary texts are productions of textual
representation, just as film and photography are visual representations.
Analyses of stories or films on the city are likely to provide an intelligible –
not to say legible – view of the city. There is an echo of Barthes’ semiology,
which approaches the city as a text to be read (1997). There is, however,
another French theorist who responds to his colleague with regards to
legibility of the city.
Henri Lefebvre, again, warns against a concentration on
‘transparency’ in representations of the city – a concern he shares with
Michel Foucault and Edward Soja, among others – because “textual
representations of reality may be attributed a false ‘epistemological
precedence’ over the realities of lived social space” (1991: 63).
Balshaw and Kennedy, then, do not do away with Lefebvre’s
concerns about transparency, but they think that there is an argument for
considering the “illusory power of representation” (3). Like the double
analyses of the stories here (the spatial focus and the meta-spatial focus), the
city is not easily identifiable or even reducible to representations. The bridge
48
between mental and physical space, in Lefebvre’s sense, then consists
exactly of representations. Or, as Balshaw and Kennedy argue, “the
relationship between material and imaginary spaces is one that is rendered
opaque as well as transparent by the force of representation” (3).
William Maxwell’s “Over by the River” (1974) is an experimental
story in that it consists of a collage of fragments, which each offer a view of
a particular place in the city. These bits of life denote the activities of the
Carrington family (George and Iris, their two daughters Laura and Cindy,
and Puppy the dog), living in Manhattan, around the time of Christmas. The
third-person narrator observes from an objective viewpoint outside the
story, although the main focus is on George Carrington, the father of the
family. In contradistinction to first-person narrators, who provide a
narrowed and subjective perspective of the city, the third-person narrator
provides an overall view of city life. The fragmented style, which winds up
in an elliptical form of writing, shows the ambition not to show the city as a
whole, but rather to offer a general, albeit fragmented, view of the city
picked from a few particular situations.
The story begins with George walking the dog along the East River,
watching a tanker that moves away from the city. Already, this scene carries
a symbolical load, in that it represents a motif of departure, of escape. The
title “Over by the River” directly denotes a location as the element that
flows. The river is a counter-image to the family, which is stuck on the land.
There are also no plot dynamics in the story as a result from the randomly
fragmented style. The family simply stays, and does nothing. There is
violence and crime acted out in the background of the story: theft, suicide,
policemen entering a building, etc. The possibility of escape offered by the
49
river is a device that Maxwell uses to contrast the mental space of departure
and the physical reality of violence.
We also clearly deal with a rich upper-class family. They have a maid
– which is replaced because she is suspected of theft – a laundress, a
doorman and an elevator man. They live on the eighth floor. The level of
residence is a marker for wealth: the higher one lives, the richer one is. Also
the girls go to school by themselves, which represents that they live in an
upper-class neighborhood. The girls easily catch colds, which stands for a
life that almost entirely takes place indoors – which is their kind of city life,
the upper-class kind.
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
Another image that does not harmonize with our usual view of the
city is the keeping of a hunting dog in the heart of Manhattan. One could
read this metaphorically for taking away creatures from their natural
environment. It also denotes a protection of space, confirming the overall
atmosphere of fear that plays in the background. Maxwell delivers here a
presentation of a living environment, a city space, which is in constant
danger of underlying violence. The private indoor life contrasts strongly
with the public outside space. This private versus public duality reflects in a
way the dichotomy between mental and physical space.
The city is the place par excellence where the public is present. A
public space is space accessible to anyone. Of course, attached to the public
50
are the risks of encountering the Other, the different and difference. The
group diversity and difference in community and ethnicity are most visible
in public spaces. Public spaces, then, are the representations, or even spatial
embodiments, of democracy, and carry out an important role in the
heterogeneity of the city and supportiveness of difference.
In public life the differences remain unassimilated, but each
participating group acknowledges and is open to listening to the
others. The public is heterogeneous, plural, and playful, a place where
people witness and appreciate diverse cultural expressions that they
did not share and do not fully understand (Young: 269).
Paul Auster’s “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” (1990) directly
addresses the concept of representation and consequently the discrepancy
between representation and transparency. But what does that mean? Is truth
what we are really after? Can truth be equated with transparency, and if so,
the duality of representation and transparency still remains. Except for the
name of its main character (Auggie Wren), the story is as Auggie Wren told
it to the narrator.
The Christmas tale itself is not important in the context of space
here; the outcome of the story, however, presents opportunities to consider
the story in this spotlight. The result of the Christmas tale is that Auggie has
found a camera.
In a small, windowless room at the back of the store, he opened a
cardboard box and pulled out twelve identical photo albums. This
was his life’s work, he said, and it didn’t take him more than five
minutes a day to do it. Every morning for the past twelve years, he
had stood on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street at
precisely seven o’clock and had taken a single color photograph of
precisely the same view. The project now ran to more than four
thousand photographs. Each album represented a different year, and
all the pictures were laid out in sequence, from January 1 to
December 31, with the dates carefully recorded under each one
(Auster: Op-Ed).
51
In a first reaction, the narrator answers Auggie that they are all the same,
“precisely the same view”. Of course, they all are different. Each
photograph represents another day. The object may stay the same, the
external factors shift from day to day: the weather, the passers-by,
“changing angles of light as the seasons advanced”. Eventually, some
people will have figured more than once in the pictures, but their moods
will have differed. The physical space represented stays relatively equal
throughout the years (not considering renovation works or superficial
changes to buildings), whereas the mental space that is not represented
directly, has been shifting from the first photograph onwards.
52
The question of truth is central to this story. Although the narrator
at the very beginning assures us that the story is true, the reader can
impossibly verify whether this statement is actually true. Generally, what
one perceives with one’s own eyes is accepted as true. The pictures are an
example of such an empirical truth. The other facet of truth in this story is
shown as Auggie tells the narrator a story. Auggie helps his friend out by
giving him a story. Like we in the case of “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story”,
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
the narrator can impossibly verify the truth about Auggie’s tale. Besides the
fact that this is a story about representation, it is also a story about
storytelling. Auster brilliantly denotes the duality of representation through
telling a story, which he covers with a meta-layer on storytelling. Once the
story is told, it no longer depends on its teller. This also holds true for one’s
perception of the city, or for a representation of the city: the beholder of a
representation links the input back to what is represented, the city, in his or
her own, idiosyncratic way.
The question of truth and representation also arises in John Edgar
Wideman’s “Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies” (1991). All Stories are
True is the interesting title of a collection in which this short story was
republished (Wideman: 1992). This volume contains autobiographical
content. This also holds true for this story. The plot is based on a New York
53
Times article titled “Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies” 8. A young black
Brooklyn woman gave birth in a Coney Island housing project and then
dropped the infant down a trash chute. That is the premise of the story.
What Wideman gives the reader is a description of the fall down the chute.
The infant is thrown from the tenth floor and ends up in the garbage
compactor on the ground floor.
What we get is a floor-by-floor description of the tumble. Each
floor has a special name (e.g. “The Floor of Questions”, “The Floor of
Facts” (123)), denoting what kind of phase the infant is going through.
Indeed, we get the baby’s perspective and as such we are familiarized with
the non-inexistent past and future of the baby, a fictionalised and fantasized
biography. It is clear that the author’s intention was to give the victim a
voice – a voice that has never existed.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
Clearly, as appears from the story and from the article, there was no space
for this baby – albeit a mental space rather than a physical space. A second
topical focus is violence. “We had killings, shootings and robberies here, but
we never had a baby thrown down a trash chute before,” as testifies one of
the people who lived in the housing project where this drama unfolded 9.
Another witness in the same newspaper argues that “A lot of people
8
9
James, George. “Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies.” New York Times 14 Aug. 1991, B3.
James, George. “Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies.” New York Times 14 Aug. 1991, B3.
54
are saying only a vicious person would do such a thing, but you never know
what’s going through her mind.” As the analysis here, the woman argues
that it all depends on interpretation. The facts stay the same to everyone,
what matters is how people fill in the spaces that are left unspoken. The
urban Real is a given unaltered by human mediation. The Real is the reality
that one never can perceive in its full entirety. Once the Imaginary gets
involved, once people start intervening with lingual or graphic
representations of that given, the image of the city as a cognitive concept is
formed. That is where the mental and physical space overlap, and where
space is produced as a social construction.
The production of urban space is simultaneously real, symbolic and
imaginary; what it produces is a material environment, a visual culture
and a psychic space. Recognition of this simultaneity of and in
representation does not (necessarily) ‘take us away from materialised
realities’, not unless we assume that representational forms (always)
transcend or exist autonomously from what they represent (Balshaw
and Kennedy: 5).
In “Urban Ecology” (1996), Peter Saunders takes a closer look at
the way those “materialised realities” are planned and constructed. He
makes three basic assumptions: 1. Social life in cities is patterned, somehow
organized. He concludes that cities are “urban systems” (36). 2. Cities are
results of “human intervention” (36), which he derives from Anthony
Giddens’ “created environment” (Giddens: 1984). 3. Each intervention is
time-bound, relying on earlier generations (36). It is also the result of
conscious and unconscious actions of many individuals.
A part of human ecology, cities are social systems in that they are
dynamic, organized, and their organizations are purpose-directed, geared for
keeping the system going, reducing complexity, integrating input, excluding
55
threats to system stability. Saunder’s aim is to consider the impact of
spontaneous unplanned elements of urban systems as against intentional
human design.
Looking at the history of city planning, Saunders’ conclusions are:
even to the “masters of universe” (urban planners such as Albert Speer in
Berlin, or Le Corbusier’s ‘cities in the sky’ (37)) there have been limits to
realizing their designs. They have been confronted with political, financial
and market forces, but also by a powerful “spatial logic” (37). In addition,
the gap between planned visions of ‘how people should live’ and urban
reality has often been disastrously disappointing. The housing situation in
(poorer) metropolitan areas is an example of that gap. Large scale designs
violate certain (often unconscious) human needs. This way, a distinction
between the “created” and the “designed” environment is brought about
(Saunders: 38).
Consequently, the housing situation in New York City involves
problems with regards to rent, space, geography, social life, etc. “The Slaves
in New York” by Tama Janowitz (1986) shows the housing situation of
Eleanor, a 28-year-old jewelry designer. At that moment in time, the city
nearly went bankrupt, and was still crawling back on its feet, which is why it
was possible for such persons (like Eleanor) to move into the wealthier
parts of the city. In the 1960s, New York, like most of the metropolitan
areas in urbanized countries, was witnessing a rapid growth of population.
As such, the hinterland expanded, which created space, a created
environment, for wealthier people who desired to live at commuting
distance of the city. This process is called “suburbanization” (Champion:
148).
56
The 1970s, then, stood for an era in which migration flows were
reversed. The center of the city began to be populated with ‘new
immigrants’, who before, as a result of their class, could not permit
themselves to live in the city center. Champion terms this movement “the
decade of counterurbanization” (Champion: 148). Artists, students, bluecollar workers, immigrants, etc. were the main protagonists in that process.
“The Slaves in New York” is set in the mid eighties. At that time, the city
was experiencing a revival on an economic level, which resulted in
increasing rents. Eleanor stands for those people who could no longer
afford the rent by themselves.
The housing situation, the necessity of space, and dependence are
starkly intertwined here. Again, we find a story here in which space is a
feature provided by a dependence relationship. The female protagonist is
highly dependent on someone else to have a place to live. What we get here
is supremacy of the necessity of space on self-development. The self
becomes secondary, in that the space where the self resides – and before
that, the struggle for that space – is primary.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
Saunders is also concerned with the struggle for space. Drawing on Robert
Park and Leonard Reissman (1964), Saunders develops a theory looking at
the biological forces beyond conscious social action. Park and Reissman
57
explained the urban expansion of Chicago as the spontaneous growth of
population in natural areas, which follows a subconscious, yet systemic
pattern (Saunders: 40). That pattern mainly consists of accessibility to social
needs: retailing, housing, mobility, recreation etc. Park makes a distinction
between society/culture (economic interests, politics, laws) and biotic
struggle, which is basically an underlying competition for space, for a social
and functional niche where one can “put down roots” (Saunders: 40). Over
time, different activities will dominate different areas, symbiotic
relationships will arise, and the resulting ecological system will tend towards
the state of equilibrium (40). Cities, according to Park, grow and sustain
themselves in recurring periods of invasion, defense and domination,
directed by powers we cannot directly observe. These powers are the biotic
forces: “real yet unobservable tendencies” (Saunders: 41). This is where
Park’s analysis becomes problematic. How can one identify “underlying”
processes – let alone to prove that they exist – when it cannot be directly
observed?
Peter Dickens tries to develop Park’s theory, and argues that “ Park
was not attempting a direct and obvious analogy between the workings of
nature and those of human societies. Rather, he was arguing that there is
indeed a ‘biotic’ level to human behavior, one constituted by instincts of
survival and competition” (1990: 33). The question remains, however,
whether shopping, housing, mobility, etc. really are the arenas of
competition/struggle for survival, or rather of exclusion, racial
discrimination, etc.
Saunders leaves this question unanswered as well, but instead offers
a useful way to read Park and Dickens. “Park seems also to have been
58
suggesting (as Dickens recognizes) that the way cities evolve somehow
reflects the natural instincts and biological and psychological needs of the
individuals who compete for territory within them” (Saunders: 43).
Donald Barthelme’s “The New Owner” (1987) is a story that
confirms Saunders’, and partly Park’s, observation. The narrator of the story
describes the new owner of the building where he lives. The exact place in
New York City is not given, although we get a glimpse of “this wondrous
street where our friends and neighbors have lived for decades in Christian,
Jewish, and, in some instances, Islamic peace” (77-78). From the
perspective of the narrator, the new owner tries everything to get them out
of the building. He fires the superintendent, he raises the rent – although
his apartment is rent-controlled – slips rent bills into the mailboxes, lowers
the heat, etc. “The new owner wants us out” (78).
This story noticeably deals with the struggle for space in a city like
New York. In order to get his tenants out of the building, the new owner
does not apply overt violence. Instead, he chooses for a more covert form
of non-violence, like the bully at primary school. The new owner fires the
old superintendent, and, “the new super does not put out the garbage, does
not mop the halls, does not, apparently, exist” (78).
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
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Violence
59
The reason why the new owner wants his tenants to move out is
plain: rent control is a feature that lasts as long as the same tenants keep
living in the building. That means that the rent cannot be increased in an
unreasonable way as long as the original inhabitants are still there. By
persuading, albeit in intolerable ways, his tenants to depart, the new owner
hopes to raise the rent, and gain more money.
In the struggle to own a place in the city, people actually have to
stick to their place, in order to keep the rent within their means. As such,
they are dependent on the particular space as well as on the owner of the
space – unless they own the place themselves. This story is exemplary for
the problem it describes; a problem that is current in metropolitan areas all
over the world: shortage of housing. City planners do try to cope with this
problem, but not all decisions taken are as effective in practice as they were
meant in theory. In this respect, the discrepancy between the private and
the public is a major obstacle for city planners.
60
D) Sex
Sex will be approached from two major viewpoints in this section. First,
there is the point of view that tackles the representation of sexual
intercourse in the stories. Major questions in this respect address the
distinction between sex in private and public spaces. Are there specific
places in the city where one can go, to fulfill one’s sexual urges? How do
citizens react to overt sex? Is there a city policy with regards to sexual
offences, and if so, how or they dealt with? The space lens will be used in
combination with this perspective of sex to investigate the stories.
Second, there is a center of attention on sexuality. The analyses of
the stories will treat sex in the forming of sexual identity. Indispensably,
sexual orientation, and how one orientates oneself sexually, will play a key
role. As it is, some of the stories deal with minority groups that are interestbased with regard to sexuality. Does this lead to the formation of
communities, and if so, do these communities intersect with the formation
of individual identities? It should be clear that the stories on sex and
sexuality will be considered in relation to the dependence lens.
In their seminal Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the World of its Founder
(1996), Harry Hay and Will Roscoe notice two watershed moments in the
final quarter of the twentieth century with regards to the reception of
sexuality in urban social life. First, there is the emergence of emancipational
movements, in the afterglow of May 1968 in Europe. Those movements
strive to ransom minorities, which include sexual groups among others. In
June 1969, the first Gay Parade was held in New York City. The Gay Parade
is an occasion for celebrating gay pride. The first parade started in a bar in
61
Greenwich Village: “The Stonewall Bar”. The New York Police
Department were, at the time, not as emancipated as now, and reacted
rather harshly and aggressively to this outspoken form of homosexual
celebration. The riots that occurred in 1969 are now known as the
“Stonewall-riots”, which refers to the name of the bar where everything
started. These riots signify the beginning of the emancipation of sexual
minorities, the Gay Liberation Movement being one of them. These
occasions opened doors for people who wanted to break taboos by overtly
writing, singing, etc. about homosexual lifestyles (Hay and Roscoe: 1996).
Felice Picano is a pioneer in the field of gay literature. He is a
respected and widely read writer in gay communities all over the world. His
“Expertise” (1986) does not embellish nor euphemizes the gay scene of the
eighties. The characters are still untouched by AIDS, and they lively take
part in the vibrant New York gay lifestyle. Alex, the gay protagonist, is left
by his third lover, Bradley. He is depressed for a while, but then decides to
transform himself into a sex object: Alex is determined to get a lot of onenight stands and go to decadent parties. When he inspects himself in a
mirror, Alex finds that his looks are okay, but he needs a new wardrobe and
some serious workout.
Six months later, he is in bed with a man called Hendrik. They had
started out at the beach, but now Hendrik is not aroused anymore, because
he is used to experts. He then shows Alex how it is properly done.
The moment with Hendrik signifies a turning point. Alex more and
more goes to parties, baths, etc. But he can never stay with one kind of
man. Jeff, another so-called gay expert, tells him it is a matter of expertise
and that all he needs is practice. Hendrik proposes Alex to go to a certain
62
club. Alex postpones this for a month, but then eventually does go. There
are a lot of closets with holes in the walls to put genitalia through. He is
cautious at first, but then enters one of the cubicles. A man enters and Alex
gives him a blowjob.
He goes more often and gets more experienced. Then one time, Jeff
walks in. He doesn’t recognize Alex. Alex follows him and eventually gets
into a cubicle beside him. He gives him a blowjob and then asks Jeff to
come in with him. They have intercourse, and afterwards they talk on a
bench. Alex feels good he outdid an expert. He feels changed. Alex turns
down Jeff’s invitation. Jeff leaves. Another man enters and “then a fat warm
cock head was brushing against his lips. Alex opened his mouth. And was
pacified” (43).
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
The story depicts the pre-AIDS explicit gay scene, featured by casual
sex, heavy parties that wind up in orgies, etc. Alex seeks fulfillment in free
sex, but the end seems to suggest that this fails, that it was just a cover to
impress Jeff. The basic idea behind this is the treatment of sex as a
commodity, and as a status symbol. Sex and sexual capacities define one’s
social position within the gay scene. Even within that neatly defined milieu
of gay sex seekers, differences exist between members of that same
subculture. One finds oneself already in the margins of society, and even
63
there, one can be marginalized. The oppositions between and within social
structures are heavily influenced by sex in the context of gay communities.
The unbridled celebration of sex in gay communities gives away to
the second watershed in the treatment of sexual issues in New York City.
No city in the Western world has been affected by AIDS so heavily as New
York. In the first twenty years of the AIDS-crisis – the last twenty years of
the twentieth century – one fifth of all AIDS-Americans who died were
New Yorkers (Valentine and Skelton: 852). This entailed a massive
collective grieving process. One could argue on the basis of that number
that everybody in New York knows someone who died of AIDS. The
collective grieving process entails collective traumas, in the sense that a lot
of people go through the same phase of loss. The two watersheds taken as a
whole can be analyzed like a process of action (uncontrolled sex) and
reaction (AIDS).
Thomas Glave’s “The Final Inning” (1996) is a complex
story on the matter of loss on a primary level. Underneath, Glave depicts
the difficulties for a family in accepting that one is homosexual. The
tolerance of the other, of diversity, is thus clearly present in this story as
well. This prize winning short story is set in Sound Hill, the Bronx, where
an African American family gathers just after the funeral of Duane, a young
gay family remember. This is in fact a paradoxical issue. To out oneself
means that one gets ‘in’ the homosexual community. At the same time,
however, one jeopardizes an already established social network in that
people in that network will perhaps not tolerate the otherness
(homosexuality). To stay ‘in’, on the other hand, signifies that one keeps up
appearances for a social network that in fact is not one’s natural habitat,
64
which would be the gay community. The fear to be ‘out’ of that fake,
constructed social network – opposed to the natural habitat – urges him to
stay ‘in’. This paradox also clearly shows that there is a polarization on the
basis of sexual identity. Later on, we will see that this polarization is also
reflected spatially, in that there exists a ‘gay ghetto’ in New York City.
Obviously, these are members of the gay community, which is
mainly situated in Greenwich Village (Meyer: 448).
Back in the house of one of the family members, the family cannot
believe the disgrace that has befallen them. They keep on referring to AIDS
(Duane’s cause of death) as “that”, afraid of pronouncing the horrible
acronym. Susan Sontag’s “The Way we Live now” (1986) describes
precisely the same fear of pronouncing the word AIDS. 10 Again, as in most
of the other stories, the thematic analysis yields a set of interlinked facets.
The type of sexuality exists only and should be read only in the context of
an African American ethnicity. This link between sexuality and ethnicity is
most clearly to be detected in Gregory, an uncle of Duane, who as a
husband and father of two children, hasn’t come out of the closet either. By
placing a ‘silent’ gay and his thoughts within the family, Glave succeeds in
displaying a double perspective: a conservative and almost homophobic
outside focus, on the one hand, versus an experiential inside knowledge, on
the other hand. The following excerpt is an example of Gregory’s insider
subjectivity, integrated in the story as a monologue interieure:
They all could take the truth about everything else: about knocked-up
teenagers, crackhead sons, numbers-running uncles, raped nieces . . .
– but not about nobody they cared about supposed to be black and
strong like you was Duane but with that faggot shit: what to them
was whitefolks shit, another sick nasty fuckedup white thing like that
10
See section ‘Dependence’
65
nasty old AIDS, just like nasty whitefolk, not for no black man we
know . . . (173)
A final interesting fact to know about the plot is that it is based upon a true
story. Glave said in an interview with J-FLAG (Jamaica Forum for
Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays) that “the story developed out of [writer]
Assotto Saint’s telling me about the funeral of Donald Woods” (Brinkley:
2001). Donald Woods is probably the model for ‘Duane’ and Assotto Saint
for the ‘white-looking ass’ who stood up for gay rights and against
hypocrisy.
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
If one considers the two turning points (uncontrolled sex and
AIDS) as being a process of action and reaction, then actually there is a
third flux to be discovered. One could even argue that it is the synthesis of
the previous two trajectories. The third era in the topic of sex denotes the
development of medication for AIDS. Developments in the pharmaceutical
world in the first place have triggered a revolution in battle against AIDS.
However, tolerance towards the other has absolutely been necessary in (1)
democratizing the prices of such treatments, and (2) in taking away the
66
shield of intolerance around sexual minorities (a shield that was built by
those who looked down on difference).
The battle against AIDS is a global issue. The organization of that
battle, however, differs greatly from country to country, based on various
factors such as national health and security systems, political decisions, and
economic power. What is important, however, is that the tendency (action,
reaction, synthesis) shows a positive curve. “The Third Man” by David
Groff (2000) presents a homosexual doctor in New York. His perspective
on the AIDS-problem within the gay community involves the difficulties
that AIDS-treatment entails. A third-person narrator tells this tale of three
men. Chelsea, The Village in general and Fire Island are the main gathering
points for gays in New York City, as described by Groff.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
1
Sex
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
Before ethnicity, dependence is a strong thematic line throughout
this short story. Outside the gay scene, gay people have not many options
left to turn back to for emotional and even physical support. They all
depend on each other, not to paraphrase but to hint at the quote on gay bed
habits I already mentioned. In contrast to Duane, the dead homosexual in
“The Final Inning”, the gays portrayed here have come out the closet. This
entails, however, that their network becomes secluded. New York City is an
important center in the battle of homosexual people to tear down the walls
of prejudice and intolerance. It is here that the minority group of
67
homosexual men becomes a heterogeneous mix of men, differing in class,
ethnicity, religion, race, etc. The boundaries between groups of different
sexual orientations, however, remain difficult to overcome (Chauncey: 18).
Overall, gays and lesbians are still put into boxes by insulting
nicknames (Meyer: 450). However, since the Stonewall Riots, the word ‘gay’
has evolved as term. Heterosexuals as well as homosexuals have used ‘Gay’
positively. This evolution has been encouraged by the Gay Liberation
Movement (Hay and Roscoe: 1996).
Increasingly, in the 1980s, ‘gay’ has been evaluated as too restrictive.
There are more sexual minorities than only homosexual and lesbian groups.
Since then, the term ‘queer’ has been highly regarded as a term of pride
within gay communities. However, ‘queer’ is to be found in political
contexts (AIDS activists) and academic contexts (a term of inclusion; it
wants to include each text that is not straightforwardly hetero) as well.
Since the 1990s, tolerance of the topic has increased, and the
inclusion of all sorts of sexual minorities has led to the so-called Rainbow
Coalition. In Creating a Place for ourselves: Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community
Histories, Brett Beemyn (1997) explains the Rainbow Coalition as follows:
LGTBQ is an acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Transgender/sexual,
Bisexual, Queer/Questioning. ‘Questioning’ are those who are still in search
of a fitting sexual identity and/or orientation. ‘Transgender’ represents drag
queens and drag kings, which are respectively men and women who dress
up and act like the opposite sex. ‘Transsexual’ signifies those who change
sex by means of plastic surgery. ‘MTF’ are ‘male-to-female’ operations;
‘FTM’ stand for ‘female-to-male’ transactions. Finally, Beemyn distinguishes
68
yet between two more sexual groups: ‘Intersexual’ (hermaphrodites), and
‘Asexual’ (sexless people) (1997: 48).
The point that Beemyn makes is the following. There has
increasingly been a tendency to form groups and come together as LGTBQ
in big cities since the 1970s. George Chauncey terms this the “Reverse
Diaspora” (1997: 21). What happens in fact is the deliberate choice to create
ghettoes of people of distinct sexual orientation in the cities. Historically, in
New York City, ‘The Gay Ghetto’ was established in Greenwich Village.
Due to migration processes (gentrification), the gay ghettoes have moved to
Chelsea (especially younger and high-income LGTBQ’s) and Park Slope,
Brooklyn (lesbian neighborhood).
The complicated quest for sexual identity, orientation and reception,
is revealed in Sarah Schulman’s “The Penis Story” (1990). The story sets off
with Ann, the lesbian protagonist of the story, who awakes with a penis
between her legs. She does not panic. She goes to the bathroom and pisses
standing up, which is a new experience. She puts on a Levis, but ‘it’ bulges
out. She is going to meet her friends for lunch at Shelley’s house. Shelley,
one of An’s many lesbian friends within the lesbian community, asks her
what “that” is between her legs. Ann answers a penis. At first they ignore it,
but then Roberta asks An to show it. They all agree that Ann has a penis.
“‘Did you eat anything strange yesterday’ Judith asked. ‘Maybe it’s from
masturbating,’ Roberta suggested, but they all knew that couldn’t be true”
(274).
Ann leaves to go to the Central Park Ramble, which used to be a
bird and wildlife sanctuary. Now it has been transformed to one of the
favorite public spaces in New York City where homosexual men overtly
69
have sex. An starts talking to a gay man and they smoke a joint. Ann
eventually says she has a “cock” and asks a homosexual called Mike
something she has always wanted to ask; “do you want to suck my cock?”
(275). He does. She in the meanwhile thinks about Jesse, her best lesbian
friend, of whom An is not sure whether she is in love with her.
The next morning An wakes up and her hands are covered in blood.
She is menstruating and because the blood did not have another place to
come out, it flowed from under her fingernails. A lot of women suddenly
want Ann, but they do not want anyone to know. Ann declines, but
eventually gives in to Muriel. But fucking Muriel is not the same. It is as
though she is making love “from” Muriel, instead of “to” (277). Muriel
shows An a sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art by Louise Bourgeois
(ocean of black penises carrying a little box house; called “Womanhouse”
(278)).
An wants her clitoris back and goes to a doctor for surgery. But she
wants the exact same as she had. So she calls together all the women she
ever made love to. At the end of the night they reconstructed it from
memory onto a drawing. Ann wants to be a full woman again.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
This is an explicit story about lesbianism and lesbian identity. The
protagonists are lesbian women in full search of their own sexuality. Ann
acquires a penis, but that doesn’t make her more male in mind – in the end
70
she decides to fully restore her sexuality, as she had always known it. Jesse
seems to be a lesbian, but afraid to fully come out (or has not fully decided
yet).
There is also a small hint at sexual violence and antifeminism. At the
Central Park Ramble, Ann sees that stickers with “End Violence in the
Lives of Women” are scribbled over with “suck my cock” – “it seemed like
an appropriate response given the world in which we all live” (275) is Ann’s
laconic comment.
The final analysis in this chapter covers Beth Nugent’s “City of
Boys” (1992). The narrator of this story is a lesbian woman who lives in a
rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side, more exactly on West
Eighty-third and Amsterdam. She lives there with an older woman who
found the narrator sleeping on a mattress outside a porn theatre on 98th and
Broadway. In turn for a free apartment, the narrator sleeps with the older
woman.
One day she gets into a car full of boys for a ride. The boys in the
car conspire and think she does not understand them. The boys tell her they
have a clubhouse, but there is an initiation. She tells them she will not fuck
them all, separately or together. The clubhouse is dirty and full of roaches.
She tells one of the boys she wants to go out, but he wants a shot first. He
is a junkie. They drive to Inwood Park, and walk close to the Hudson. The
boy loses no time, takes her quickly and without further ado, but she thinks
of the older woman.
The narrator comes home and shows the older woman she is a
marked woman. The woman sees no difference. She tells the narrator to be
quiet, while she moves her hand from her mouth to her chest. This gesture
71
implies an urge to cover what has happened. The older woman literally
silences the narrator by placing her hand on the narrator’s mouth. Then, the
gesture evolves to an erotic intimation: she moves her hand to her chest –
her breasts. In doing so, the older woman signals to the narrator that she is
still welcome. The older woman still allows the narrator in their private
space.
The lenses of sex and dependence are strongly present in this story.
In an interview, Ms. Nugent concedes that her protagonists tend to have an
uncontainable sexuality. “Sex is presented to us culturally as the ultimate
union between people, spiritually, physically and emotionally. Whether it’s
with a stranger or a relative, I think these characters have this in their minds
as they struggle to break out of isolation. In a sense, it’s their last hope.”
(Hunnewell: 1992)
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
On the other hand we encounter dependence in two ways. Firstly,
there is dependence in the form of dominance, supremacy of the older
woman over the narrator: “You are my sweetheart . . . and if you leave me,
you will spend all your life coming back to me” (371). In a way the older
woman takes on the role of the mother: “She is just another woman in the
long series of mothers . . . but you are always coming back to them” (374).
We perceive also the dominance of males over females, although we should
mention this with nuance: the older woman seems a stronger figure than
72
her male lover Tito, and the junkie who the narrator has sex with is a
pathetic figure.
Secondly, the junkie character represents dependence on drugs.
Taking drugs is presented as a social activity (the boys do it in a club), yet
ruins lives (the boy not becoming a track star because of his drug addiction,
which is an extreme form of dependence.) “Junkies exit right out of every
situation before it’s even become a situation” (378).
73
E) Violence
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines violent crime according
to four offence categories: (1) murder and non-negligent manslaughter, (2)
forcible rape, (3) robbery and (4) aggravated assault (FBI, 1997: 10). In
1992, there were 6.6 million violent victimizations. Five percent of all US
households had thus a member victimized by violence. By 1994, the total
number of homicides nationwide had dropped slightly to 23,305, which is
more than five percent less than in 1993 (McClain: 221). The most
important deduction that one can make from these statistics is that blacks
are six times more likely to be victims of homicide than whites. Paula
McClain thus states that crime in the USA is primarily intra-racial (1996:
222). Still, another statistic emerges and creates a paradox. The majority of
the offenders of violent crime appear to be black as well (Rose and
McClain: 1990). The noticeable paradox consists, then, of the
disproportionate representation of blacks as both victims and offenders of
violent crime. McClain argues that this problem stems from external forces
that affect black urbanites, such as centuries of racism, persistent poverty
and the structure of the economy in black areas. As previous analyses of
stories and lenses show, social, ethnic and racial segregation (and even
polarization) is a hard reality in New York City.
Elijah Anderson (1994) states that youth vulnerability in the city has
risen steadily ever since the end of WWII. There is a noticeable rise of
youth street culture that rejects mainstream values. This culture involves an
increasing rate of gang development, the growth of cocaine/crack
dependence and a greater access to firearms (Anderson: 85). Also the
74
dismantling of the nuclear family as a protective, positive factor plays a part
in the phenomenon of youth violence (McClain: 222).
As the previous sections illustrate, the urban environment promotes
social disorganization and individual alienation. The concept of
communities and subcultures includes large numbers of people who share
and accept the same attitudes (and at the same time exclude other opinions).
This concept entails, too, that there are subgroups that accept illegal activity.
Charles Murray (1984) introduces in this respect the concept of the
underclass: “welfare and other ‘liberal’ policies had ‘created a new caste of
American – perhaps as much as one tenth of this nation – a caste of people
free from basic wants but almost totally dependent upon the state, with little
hope or prospects of breaking free” (56). Would it be a sign of the times or
merely a coincidence that all the protagonists of the stories to analysis in
this section are members of racial, albeit ethnic, minorities?
And so we are back at the fundamental question of representation
and transparency – the basic underlying dichotomy in this dissertation. In
response to the Virginia Tech massacre 11, April 16 2007, Stephen King has
written an essay on predicting violence, and how to interpret violence in
fictional contexts (King: 2007). He argues that writers who describe violent
scenes need not necessarily become violent themselves. People want to
enjoy the representation of violence without horrible associations, that is
without associations to reality.
For most creative people, the imagination serves as an excretory
channel for violence: We visualize what we will never actually do. Cho
doesn’t strike me as in the least creative, however. Dude was crazy.
Dude was, in the memorable phrasing of Nikki Giovanni, “just
mean.” Essentially there’s no story here, except for a paranoid a--hole
11
The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting that killed 32 people. The perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho,
eventually committed suicide. It was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S.-history (Ashley Fantz, CNN: 2007).
75
who went DEFCON-1. He may have been inspired by Columbine,
but only because he was too dim to think up such a scenario on his
own (King: 2007).
Elizabeth Hardwick’s “Shot: A New York Story” (1993) shows violence
that corresponds to the violence that occurred at Virginia Tech, in the sense
that it is pointless. It serves no particular goal, if violence ever does. In the
dependence section, the story is already analyzed with regards to the
protagonist’s (Zona) dependence on her employers. Zona and her driver
were brutally shot one night for no particular reason. The few dollars they
both kept in their wallets were taken, while they were left in the car.
“History of this goddam city – at least a footnote to the history of these
fucking times” (461). In “The Spirit of Terrorism” Jean Baudrillard (2002)
offers a theory on critical mass, which could be applicable to this story.
Critical mass is a concept that is taken from nuclear physics. The question
that Baudrillard wants to ask with this concept is of another kind altogether
though: is the human being a social creature?
Another aspect of the terrorists’ victory is that all the other forms of
violence and destabilization of order play in its favor . . . All the forms
of disorganization and perverse circulation work to his profit. If
intoxication plays itself through instantaneous crystallization, like in a
chemical solution where a mere molecule would be immersed, it is
because the system reached a critical mass that renders it vulnerable
to any form of aggression (Baudrillard: 415).
The critical mass denotes a turning point when everything turns into its
opposite. The more people there are, the more chance of violence there is.
The highest level of social life will, in this theory, destroy itself. The
indifferent situation leads to the feeling that everything turns out to be the
evil object. In “Shot: a New York Story”, the perpetrators are described as
not having any specific intention. The climax of the turning point is hatred
76
as a last vital reaction. Look at what happens to Zona, and then compare
that to Virginia Tech: both instances are expressions of pure, unmediated
hate.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
The cheap photo camera meant the democratization of
photography. Everybody was or could be a photographer. The video
camera democratized film. The Internet signified the democratization of
opinions. The idea that the state, governments, can keep a monopoly on
violence while everything else becomes democratized, is, then, illusive.
Every person bearing a complaint, every citizen in pain, knows what it takes
to become a freedom fighter. The tolerance of the other begins with the
acceptance of the self. As long as the self is placed in margins precisely by
intolerance, violence and crime will keep on terrorizing cities.
Jean Baudrillard even warns against the efforts of the state to wipe
out violence. Systems, like governments, play an essential role in bringing
down the system itself, “just as the computer virus relies on the operation
of the computer’s systemic logic to defeat it” (1990: 62). Similarly, urban
policies that are concerned with the extermination of violence form a
greater concern than violence itself. There is a certain analogy with Simmel
here. Simmel believes that difference provokes indifference (1950: 53), and
77
Baudrillard suggests that the anti-violence-system (the policy) provokes
violence.
In The Transparency of Evil (1993), Baudrillard asks a fundamental
question: “What are you doing after the orgy?” (5). The orgy stands for
AIDS, for acts of terrorism, for unbridled violence. It stands for all the
catastrophes that happened in the past. Baudrillard’s conclusion is that only
our uncertainty becomes bigger. Gerry Coulter, the founder of the
International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (IJBS), describes the post-orgy state
in the following way: “The culture of self congratulation, promotion, and
advocacy enjoins speed with television, attaining hyper-velocity while
reconciling us to our artificial environment of violent images superimposed
on fear and the desire for hyper-security, virtual war, and total triviality”
(Coulter: 2005).
The state of post-orgy leaves the people with nothing else than the
world as a garbage heap, where compactors recycle or destroy the wraps of
consumption. Remember Wideman’s “Newborn Thrown in Trash and
Dies” (1991) in this context. A teenage black mother is so estranged from
the world and common sense that the only solution she can find to her
problem is to throw her baby down the trash chute.
The garbage image evokes a sense of concentration (the trash
compactor) and emptiness. Human beings become garbage themselves. In
this respect, garbage symbolizes a society’s hatred against itself, because it
produces itself as garbage.
The protagonist’s problem is, of course, that she does not have the
mental or the physical space to give her baby a home. The world in which
she grew up, the post-orgy world in a Brooklyn housing project, neglected
78
to teach her how to educate. The baby, in a way, even becomes the evil
object. Her only goal is to get rid of it. Her aggressive act, however, is
nothing more than a turning point. This story might even express a form of
hatred that arises from self-aggression. This teenager punishes herself by
establishing this act of violence. In doing so, she alienates herself from the
moral mainstream and becomes a part of the margins of society.
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
Alienation stems in part from disintegration of mental space and
disorganization of physical space, such as buildings etc. Cultural
productions of space show what the city used to be like, but it does not
reflect reality. There seems to be no difference between life and culture;
there is too much permeability and devastation of both mental and physical
space. In that sense, people become alienated in their environment.
“Fiesta 1980” by Junot Diaz (1996) describes the alienation of a
young Latino boy in New York. In the first place, he is alienated from his
nuclear family. This is what McClain already suggested earlier on as one of
the main reasons for the upcoming violent youth culture.
Aunt (tía) Yrma arrives in New York City and has got an apartment
in the Bronx – that is also the reason for throwing a house-warming party,
the final scene of this story. Father comes back home from work and
showers. The narrator (Yunior) and his brother (Rafa) know that father has
79
been with the Puerto Rican woman. Yunior cannot eat before they go on a
trip, because he throws up in the car. As in Oates’ “A Manhattan
Romance”, the narrator is a child. Children’s perspectives always involve
relationships of dependence – one will rarely find stories about children
who are completely abandoned, and even then they are dependent on
external, indeterminable factors. Father often hits him for vomiting and for
other reasons as well, such as sadism. The family drives in the brand-new
Volkswagen van to the Bronx. Eventually, the narrator does throw up –
vomiting as a way to express feelings that are otherwise kept inside. Yunior
reacts in his very own, idiosyncratic way against his father’s adultery. One
could say this is a mute form of violence. The mute boy Wilquins at the
party is an example of actual muteness, whereas in Yunior’s case we detect a
paradoxical form of muteness. His choice to remain silent is self-inflicted
and forced, at the same time. Yunior is forced to shut up, because he is
afraid of the consequences for his family when his father’s secret is revealed.
It is thus the public opinion that forces Yunior to be quiet. But in a way,
this choice is not his private opinion. His non-agreement results in silent
rebellion: throwing up. This rebellion, however, is his deliberate choice, and
in that sense, self-inflicted. Yunior once wrote an essay ‘My father the
tormentor’, but his teacher dismissed it (28).
5
4
Ethnicity
3
Dependence
2
Space
Sex
1
Violence
0
Ethnicity
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
80
At the party, he is not allowed to eat. His aunt gives him something
to eat and they sit on the stairs. She asks him how things are at home, if
there are any fights. He shrugs. The adults are dancing. Tía and Mami are
talking. Yunior hopes his father will be exposed. On the way back home,
everything seems fine, but then he has to throw up again.
The vomiting places Yunior in a margin, it shuts him off and
renders him alien. Also not being allowed to eat has the same effect.
Yunior’s act is a form of self-aggression, like the mother in “Newborn
Thrown in Trash and Dies”. Unlike “Shot: a New York Story”, Yunior’s
aggression is not blind, pointless hatred. His hatred is justified as his father
jeopardizes the family by committing adultery. Yunior, hopes to attract
attention by keeping his mouth shut and by vomiting. He protests silently.
On the one hand, there is a desire of uniqueness inherent to human beings.
On the other hand, there is fear for difference, clearly reflected in Yunior. If
he were to expose his father, the family would be destroyed, and, as such,
make them different from other families. This paradox will ultimately result
into self-hate, of which we already see the first symptoms in Yunior’s selfaggression (the vomiting).
81
4. CONCLUSION
What I have tried to establish in the previous chapters is the link between
literature, on the one hand, and sociological articles and research, on the
other hand. The binding element in this set-up is urban space, in this case
more particularly New York City. The basic assumption is, thus, urban
space and representation. In the previous chapter we have seen that there
are similarities between the data taken from these different fields of study.
Although literature, in this case short stories, is not considered to provide
hard facts – in contrast to what is retrieved in sociology – fiction can
however be brought under analysis, with the understanding that
representation provides us with a misleading – partial – framing of the city
as a legible space. In what follows, I will endeavour to elaborate on the
(il)legibility of urban space.
When one takes a closer look at the maps on pages 91-97, it
becomes immediately evident that the large majority of the stories take place
in Manhattan. ‘Map 1’ on page 91 shows an overall image of the five lenses
taken together. On pages 91-96, one will find five maps, which respectively
present ethnicity, dependence, space, sex and violence. Another remarkable
fact is that none of the stories take place in Queens or on Staten Island.
This already marks a flaw in the representation of New York City in these
25 short stories. Not once are those two boroughs specifically mentioned in
the stories as a place of action. The focus, then, is pointed to the other three
boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.
82
Map 1: the five lenses: occurrence
: apartment/
: pier
landmark
: house
: tour/specific region
: neighborhood
: street/avenue
5
5
5
5
5
4
4
4
4
4
3
3
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
Ethnicity
1
Dependence
Space
Sex
Violence
83
Map 2: ethnicity lens: occurrence
5
4
3
2
1
Legenda 2:
lens intensity
: apartment/
landmark
: house
: pier
: tour/specific region
: neighborhood
: street/avenue
84
Map 3: dependence lens: occurrence
5
4
3
2
1
Legenda 3:
lens intensity
: apartment/
landmark
: house
: pier
: tour/specific region
: neighborhood
: street/avenue
85
Map 4: space lens: occurrence
5
4
3
2
1
Legenda 4:
lens intensity
: apartment/
landmark
: house
: pier
: tour/specific region
: neighborhood
: street/avenue
86
Map 5: sex lens: occurrence
5
4
3
2
1
Legenda 5:
lens intensity
: apartment/
landmark
: house
: pier
: tour/specific region
: neighborhood
: street/avenue
87
Map 6 : violence lens: occurrence
5
4
3
2
1
Legenda 6:
lens intensity
: apartment/
landmark
: house
: pier
: tour/specific region
: neighborhood
: street/avenue
88
Map 1 confirms Manhattan as the center of the city where most of the
action takes place. In Flesh and Blood: the Body and the City in Western
Civilization (1994), Richard Sennett compares the Village of the 1970s
(where he lived) to NYC in the early sixties, as Jane Jacobs described it in
her The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). The formation of the
population of Manhattan in the seventies has several backgrounds.
First, there are the next-generation immigrants who obtain middleclass status and move to the suburbs. Brooklyn and Queens become
populated with large communities of immigrant ethnicities. Map 4
designates the occurrence of space. The stories of the seventies and
beginning of the eighties are situated in Manhattan (Maxwell, Janowitz,
Barthelme). Stories from the second half of the eighties and nineties are set
in widening concentric circles from the center. The periphery of the Bronx
and Brooklyn becomes the scene in various stories. In the case of
Mukherjee, Wideman, Kelley, Mosley and Danticat, one also notes a cooccurrence of the ethnicity lens. Especially Kelley’s “Carlyle Tries
Polygamy” fortifies Sennet’s observation on reverse migration.
Second, a mix of junkies, prostitutes, criminals, etc. stay roaming on
the streets of the Village. Third, Sennett distinguishes older people (mainly
immigrants too) who have struggled their way to own a place downtown, or
at least are able to live somewhere where they can pay a decent rent (rent
control). In this dissertation, there are several stories that strengthen this
remark: Malamud’s “The Model” (1974) is about an old man in Manhattan
who owns a house there (Map 3: dependence).
Ultimately, there is a community of artists, “bourgeois bohemians”
(356) as Sennett calls them (Sennett categorizes himself within this last
89
group). “The Slaves in New York” by Tama Janowitz (1986) shows the
difficulties of ‘arty-farty’ Eleanor to find a place to live. Eventually, she
depends on Stash, another artist, who lives in The Village.
A general observation on the maps deals with the spread of the
stories and the evolution of the city since the seventies. The 1970s and the
beginning of the 1980s deliver stories that mostly take place in Manhattan.
The second half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s start exploring
the boroughs in this selection of stories. The second half of the 1990s
features stories that are set in more than one borough (Groff, Glave, Kelley,
Englander, Auster). This last remark could indicate the evolutionary
increase in mobility. Some of the characters own a car, others go by bus or
metro, still other characters take a taxi. It would be an interesting topic of
research to see how the new communication media (internet, cell-phone)
influence literature in terms of mobility and space. I can imagine that the
private space becomes more important. People do not have to leave their
homes anymore to make contact.
The movement from the center to the periphery is a historical
evolution. NYC is historically situated as a grid city in the tradition of
Roman city builders. NYC is a city that was designed in advance, that is in
1811 the first grid was plotted on the city lands above the Village without
any real goal population (socially speaking). Afterwards, NYC gradually
evolved in the form of an expanding chessboard. The most attractive
advantage to this grid pattern allows city builders to treat land, buildings,
streets, etc (urban units) as valuable bits of capital. The grid means a
flexibility of space, in that it does not incorporate fixed boundaries or a
fixed center. It also accounts for the “chameleon urban fabric” (Sennett:
90
360). The expansion of the periphery creates space for economic activities
that do not need the city center as a key element in its process. This
ultimately results in a periphery that takes on an economic life of its own.
The peripheral suburb as a paradise for escapists fades.
Post 1965 NYC has experienced a sudden rush of immigration.
After this process the city had almost bled to death with a new national
immigration law. The new wave of immigrants mainly comes from the
Caribbean and Central America, Korea and the collapsing Soviet empire
and a reverse flow (opposed to the 1970s flight) from the suburbs.
Individualism as an urban characteristic leads to isolation, rather
than to an endless set of possibilities to interact with other individuals. In
this respect, the diversity of access and access to diversity are important
urban concepts (Schiffauer: 1997). Diversity in that sense is not a
stimulating factor towards homogeneity; on the contrary it provokes
hostility and fear (Simmel: 1950; Baudrillard: 1997). Sennett responds to this
“sociological truism” (358) with the Judeo-Christian concept of
compassion. Sennett observes that “Difference and indifference co-exist in
the life of the Village” (357).
“Space should be designed to encourage the bodily movement”
(Sennett: 365). Roland Barthes describes how the body moves through
space with the term image repertoire: unfamiliar scenes are rapidly dealt with in
the observer’s mind, in that one categorizes/generalizes into sociological
stereotypes. Confronted with difference, the powers of the image repertoire
become passive. Rapid movement, which denotes exactly the logistics of
city life, encourages the use of this fast and highly subjective type of
judgment.
91
The lenses that are used in this dissertation have detected problems
in the urban society. They have mapped the literary samples and offer a way
of comparison to sociological data. The problems that arise through
comparison mainly deal with the duality of the private space of the
individual, on the one hand, and the public space, on the other hand. The
major question then is: how to bring about a symbiosis between the human
body and the larger body of the city?
Sennett offers his point of view in the frame of the Judeo-Christian
tradition “The less pleasure His followers take in their own bodies, the
more they will love one another” (371). Modern individualism has sought to
make the individual self-sufficient, that is independent of others. Drawing
on Sigmund Freud, Sennett furthermore argues that the body is in constant
pursuit of the “pleasure principle” (372). From this point of view, the body
is seen as a space to complete, to satisfy, and ultimately as a space where
pleasure is to be found. Pleasure will be the most satisfying when it is
comparable to the comfort of a foetus in the womb. The human body tries
to fit in the larger body of a city/civilization (which constantly launches
contradictory experiences), just like the self constantly seeks to reconcile
with the own body.
Another feature that stems from the Judeo-Christian tradition is the
moral sanction that makes people tolerate duality, incompleteness and
otherness. It should be noted that when Christian communities had to live
together with others unlike themselves, their reaction was one of oppression
(remember the Venetian ghettos), simply because the pleasure principle was
in danger. The shaping of pleasure, the form of comfort, has thus become
an important feature in the individualist and materialist society. One could
92
argue that individualism and materialism are the catalyzing powers toward
isolation and passivity. Sennett claims that in order to solve this problem,
the body of the citizen has to become a civic body. A civic body is a member
of a larger body, is a body that is aware of other members as well as of the
larger body it belongs to. Finally, in the Judeo-Christian reading of the
word, the body is ready to accept pain. The body accepting pain is ready to
detect pain in the Others, is ready to display compassion.
The question remains, however, whether it is necessary to solve
societal problems by means of implementation of religious concepts. Such
ideas are useful to theorize the problems of civilization. Such viewpoints
broaden the perspectives on specific issues in society. The reality of
problems in any given society, however, is to be dealt with in its precise
context. Religion, like ethnicity, sex, violence, space, dependence, etc. are a
part of the context, and they have to be treated as a whole. The elements
that make up the sum of a context have to be singled out and made visible.
Therefore, a map of literary representation of New York City is a means in
the process of understanding New York City, and perhaps “– will allow us
to see some significant relationships that have so far escaped us” (Moretti:
3).
93
APPENDIX I: summary of lens occurrence
Short Story
Ethnicity
Dependence Space
Sex
Violence
The Whore of Mensa
Over by the River
The Model
The Slaves in New York
Expertise
The Way we Live now
The New Owner
A Wife’s Story
You’re Ugly, too
The Penis Story
Auggie Wren’s Christmas
Story
Newborn Thrown in Trash
and Dies
City of Boys
Poor Visitor
The Boy without a Flag
Shot: a New York Story
Fiesta 1980
Baster
The Final Inning
Carlyle Tries Polygamy
9th and 13th
A Manhattan Romance
Pet Fly
The Gilgul of Park Avenue
The Third Person
5
-
5
5
5
3
5
5
4
5
5
4
3
4
5
5
4
5
-
2
2
2
2
-
-
5
-
4
5
5
2
4
3
4
4
2
4
4
5
5
5
5
3
3
4
4
3
3
4
2
2
-
5
2
4
1
5
4
4
2
-
-
4
-
-
Seven
3
(Chronological order of the short stories)
94
APPENDIX II: author’s short biographies
(The biographies are ranked chronologically, according to the date of
publication of their respective short stories as listed in Appendix I)
Woody Allen was born in Brooklyn, NY, December 1, 1935, as
Allen Stewart Konigsberg. His parents – Martin Konigsberg and Nettie
Cherry – sent young Allen to a Hebrew school, although they were actually
not orthodox Jews. Allen was soon fascinated by cinema, radio and theatre,
and as a fifteen-year-old already earned some pocket money playing the
clarinet in jazz pubs. He dropped out of both New York University and
City College of New York In 1961 he finally began performing his own
material in Greenwich Village cafes, and soon moved up to nightclubs and
talk shows. In 1965 he sold his first screenplay What's New, Pussycat? and
also acted a supporting role in the movie. He has been writing, directing and
acting in his films ever since (Björkman: 1994).
William Maxwell was born in 1908 in Lincoln, Illinois. Maxwell
attended the University of Illinois and did graduate work at Harvard, then
spent some time teaching before turning permanently to a writing career
which has produced six novels, three collections of short stories, a memoir,
a collection of essays, and a children’s book. For forty years Maxwell was a
fiction editor at The New Yorker, where he edited the work of some of the
century’s foremost writers, including John Updike and Vladimir Nabokov.
He died in 2000 (Burkhardt: 2005).
Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 26,
1914. The son of recently emigrated Russian Jews, he spent his early years
in New York City, attending the City College of New York and acquiring
his M.A. from Columbia University in 1942. In 1949 Bernard Malamud
moved to Corvallis, Oregon to teach English Composition at Oregon State
College (now Oregon State University) and remained there until 1961. He
left OSC in 1961 for Harvard and concluded his teaching career at
Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. His novel The Fixer won the
Pulitzer Prize, as well as one of the two National Book Awards he received
during his lifetime. He died of a heart attack in Vermont in 1986 (Giroux:
1997).
Tama Janowitz was born in San Francisco, California, April 12,
1957, to a psychiatrist father and literature professor mother who divorced
when she was ten. Janowitz moved to the East Coast of the United States
and started writing about life in New York City, where she had settled
down. She socialized with Andy Warhol and became well-known in New
York’s literary and social circles. Her 1986 collection of short stories, Slaves
of New York brought her wider fame. Slaves of New York was adapted into a
1989 film directed by James Ivory. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband,
Tim Hunt, and their adopted daughter (Buchwald: 1999).
Felice Picano’s contribution to contemporary gay literature in his
own work has been immense. His founding of one of the first gay
publishing firms, SeaHorse Press, has fostered a profound growth in the gay
literary genre. Over the course of the last several decades, Picano, with
members of the pioneering gay literary group, the Violet Quill, is
responsible for the most heralded gay literature of the 1980s and 1990s
(Canning: 2001).
95
Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933,
grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She
received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and did
graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University
and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford . . . A human rights activist for more than
two decades, Susan Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the
American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated
to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which
platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and
imprisoned writers (Sontag: 2001-2003). [Susan Sontag died in New York
City on December 28, 2004.]
Donald Barthelme was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on
April 7, 1931. Barthelme attended the University of Houston, where he
majored in journalism, wrote sporadically, and contributed to the college
newspaper and yearbook. In 1953, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and
sent to Korea. After being discharged from the army, he returned to the
Houston Post in 1955, but later that year took a public relations job at the
University of Houston. In 1962, Barthelme moved to New York where he
taught until 1980, when he moved to Houston, Texas. Barthelme died of
cancer in Houston, Texas, on July 23, 1989 (Barth: 1989).
Bharati Mukherjee was born on July 27, 1940, to an upper-middle
class Hindu Brahmin family in Calcutta, India. Mukherjee earned a B.A.
with honors from the University of Calcutta in 1959. Having planned to be
a writer since childhood, Mukherjee went to the University of Iowa in 1961
to attend the prestigious Writer’s Workshop. She impulsively married Clark
Blaise, a Canadian writer. In 1968, Mukherjee immigrated to Canada with
her husband and became a naturalized citizen in 1972. Finally fed up with
Canada, Mukherjee and her family moved to the United States in 1980,
where she was sworn in as a permanent U.S. resident (Nelson: 1993).
Lorrie Moore was born in Glen Falls, New York on January 13,
1957. She attended St Lawrence University in Canton, New York, from
1974 to 1978 receiving a BA and graduating summa cum laude. She attended
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, from 1980 to 1982 receiving an
MFA. Moore holds the Delmore Schwartz Professorship in the Humanities
at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she has taught English
and writing for two decades and where she also lives with her husband and
son (Pneuman: 2005).
Sarah Schulman was born on July 28th 1958 in New York. She is a
lifelong political activist and has been involved in various campaigns
including Act-Up and the Lesbian Avengers. A novelist as well as
playwright she has published numerous books. A student of Jewish
American history and documentary film maker, Schulman continues to
work on new projects. She currently teaches English at The College of
Staten Island (Greenberg: 2000).
Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey on 3 February 1947.
He is a contemporary American novelist of Jewish origin. Auster grew up in
the Newark suburbs of South Orange and Maplewood. Auster attended
high school in Maplewood, some 20 miles southwest of New York City.
Instead of attending his high-school graduation, Auster headed for Europe.
He visited Italy, Spain, Paris, and, in homage to James Joyce, Dublin. He
returned to the United States in time to start at Columbia University in the
96
fall. In 1986 Auster takes on a position as lecturer at Princeton University—
a post he would continue to hold until 1990 (Auster: 2005).
John Edgar Wideman was born in Washington, DC., in 1941.
Shortly before his first birthday, his family moved to Homewood, an
African American community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has been
the setting of much of his fiction. He was awarded a Benjamin Franklin
scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania. In 1963, he graduated with a
B.A. in English, and won a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy at
Oxford University's New College. Wideman is a professor of English at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His articles on Malcolm X, Spike
Lee, Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Emmett Till, Thelonius Monk,
and women’s professional basketball have appeared in The New Yorker,
Vogue, Esquire, Emerge, and the New York Tlmes Magazine (Fleming: 1997).
Beth Nugent did not start writing fiction until after she graduated
from college. She was working at a publishing house in Manhattan when
she decided to enroll in the University of Iowa writing program. “I think I
just wanted to get out of New York,” she recalled in a telephone interview
from her home in Evanston, Illinois. Beth Nugent received an MFA from
the University of Iowa. She teaches at the University of Denver. Her short
fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street (Hunnewell: 1992).
Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson on
the island of Antigua. In Antigua, she completed her secondary education
under the British system due to Antigua’s status as a British colony until
1967. She went on to study photography at the New York School for Social
Research. In 1973, she changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid because her
family disapproved of her writing. Through her writing, she befriended
George W.S. Trow, a writer for the New Yorker. As a result, Kincaid met the
editor of the magazine, William Shawn, who offered her a job (Byerman:
1995).
Abraham Rodriguez Jr. is well-versed in the hardships of city life.
Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, he has opened the doors of innercity America to the world by writing about an environment he knows best:
his own. Mr. Rodriguez is best known for his books The Boy Without A Flag,
a 1993 New York Times Notable Book of the Year (Allatson: 2005).
Elizabeth Hardwick was born in Lexington, Kentucky, 1916.
Hardwick is an American literary critic, novelist, and short-story writer. She
graduated at the University of Kentucky (B.A., 1938; M.A., 1939). She was
one of the founders (1962) of the New York Review of Books and has been an
editor of and frequent contributor to it as well as to The New Yorker.
Hardwick was married to the poet Robert Lowell from 1949 to 1972
(Columbia Encyclopedia: 2005)
Junot Díaz was born and raised in Santo Domingo, the Dominican
Republic. He is author of the celebrated story collection Drown, from which
this story has been taken, and his work has appeared in Story, The Paris
Review, Time Out, Glimmer Train, African Voices, The New Yorker (including the
“Future of American Fiction” issue), and in several volumes of The Best
American Short Stories. He lives in New York City (Feldman: 2003).
Jeffrey Eugenides — winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
for Middlesex — was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1960. Eugenides was
educated at public and private schools, graduated magna cum laude from
Brown University, and received an MA in English and Creative Writing
97
from Stanford University in 1986. Two years later, in 1988, he published his
first short story. Jeffrey Eugenides lives in Berlin with his wife and daughter
(Moore: 2003).
Thomas Glave was born in a predominantly Caribbean and African
American Bronx neighbourhood. He grew up in the company of
storytellers. He spent his youth travelling between Kingston, Jamaica and
Baychester, New York City, where “his verbally virtuosic family and
neighbours were always recounting stories.” (Villagevoice: 2000)
William Melvin Kelley is a novelist, short fiction writer, and
educator. Born in New York in 1937, William Melvin Kelley attended
Fieldston School and Harvard University. He has taught literature and
writing at the New School for Social Research, the State University or New
York at Geneseo, and the University of Paris, Nanterre. From the beginning
of his career in 1962, William Melvin Kelley has employed his distinctive
form of Black comedy to examine the absurdities surrounding American
racial attitudes (Fleming: 1997).
Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He was educated
at Trinity College, Cambridge, and completed a Ph.D. on Henry Fielding's
Tom Jones at Warwick University. He taught English Poetry at Warwick,
subsequently working as a professional musician, writing music for jazz and
cabaret. He also worked as a legal proof-reader before becoming a freelance
writer and journalist (Hahn: 2001).
Joyce Carol Oates was born June 16, 1938. Growing up in the
countryside outside of Lockport, New York, she attended a one-room
schoolhouse in the elementary grades. After graduating as valedictorian, she
earned an M.A. in English at the University of Wisconsin, where she met
and married Raymond J. Smith. In 1978, Oates moved to Princeton, New
Jersey, where she continues to teach in Princeton University’s creative
writing program (Johnson: 1995).
Walter Mosley was raised in Los Angeles, California the very town
he based his first novel in. He had a Jewish mother and a black father. He
was much lighter than an average African American, so it was very easy for
him to assimilate with the ‘whites’ while being shunned by the ‘blacks’ or
vice versa. Walter Mosley is primarily a crime fiction writer (Frumkes: 1999).
Nathan Englander grew up in a strictly Orthodox home and
neighborhood on Long Island, New York. He studied at a yeshiva through
his high school years and observed all religious rules and traditions.
Englander spent a life-changing junior year abroad in Jerusalem. There he
abandoned his Orthodox faith, immersed himself in literature and began to
discover himself as a writer. When he returned to the States, he continued
writing and later graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (Bold Type).
David Groff has been involved in publishing since 1982. He has
worked as an independent editor and consultant ever since, even so he
brought out work of his own in the meanwhile. Groff is now widely known
in the States as a poet since he made his debut in 2002 with Theory of
Devolution (Doty: 2002).
Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince Haiti in 1969. Her
father immigrated to the United States two years later looking for work. Her
mother followed him in 1973. Danticat remained in Haiti eight more years,
raised by her aunt. At age twelve she was reunited with her parents in a
predominantly Haitian-American neighbourhood in Brooklyn, NYC and
98
published her first writings in English two years later (Alexandre and Ravi:
2002).
99
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