10/01

I think O'Hara captures modern experience according to Baudelaire's definition very well. O'Hara's poems have no sense of what modern experience is now. There are small connections to any modern experiences, but not many. O'Hara's poems speak to very distinct facts that occurred in the time period in which he was writing, and not ones that could transfer into future times. They are "fleeting". He talks about the specifics while, the specifics for him can only last for the small time period in which he is writing. Cost, Lingo, and areas that he speaks of, do not apply at to what we see now in 2007.

Question 1

I believe that O'Hara is both a 'man of the world' and an 'artist' according to Baudelaire. Baudelaire describes a 'man of the world' to be "a man who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons behind all its customs". This seems to be true for O'Hara in the sense that in his poems he describes his surroundings in detail and notices everything that is going around him as he walks about the city. At the same time I could argue that although O'Hara observes everything around him- he might not necessarily understand it, because I fell that in some of the poems such as A step away from Them it seems as if he is just observing and appreciating his surroundings. As for being Baudeliare's 'artist'- "a specialist, a man tied to his palette like a serf to the soil"- O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter declares that "It is even in prose, I am a real poet", and the whole poem is stating that he is a poet, and writing is what he does. So, in a sense O'Hara is almost blatanly saying that he is tied down to his work as a poet because that is what he does.

September 30

In all of Frank O’Hara’s poetry beauty is represented just as Baudelaire described, through the eternal and invariable and the relative circumstances of the contemporary society in which it was written. In Why I’m Not A Painter he juxtaposes the beauty of the modern environment with the invariable beauty of nature, “the beautiful urban fountains of Madrid as the Niger joins the Gulf of Guinea near the Menemsha Bar” and taking it farther with the contrast of environments “I don’t have to slide down between buildings to get your ear. I know you love Manhattan, but you ought to look up more often. And always embrace things, people earth sky stars, as I do, freely and with the appropriate sense of space”
The Day Lady Died is a complete glamorization of contemporary society which is a particularly good example of Baudelaire’s description of the relativeness of fashion and beauty. O’Hara mentions chorus girls which is an image of modern sex appeal and the line “skirts are flipping above heels and blow up over grates” creates a visual of modern style within a modern environment.

Beauty on Fire Island

Beauty as defined by Baudellaire invariably consists of two elements: the eternal or invariable and the relative or circumstantial. By this definition, Frank O’Hara’s poem “A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island” can surely be described as beautiful. On one hand, much of the poem is relative to the author and his situation. He talks about staying up late talking to a friend and the sun even calls him by name. On the other hand, the sun, the most invariable facet of life on earth, is the focus of the poem. Such a juxtaposition of the quintessentially eternal sun and the fleeting circumstance of a man is unquestionably beautiful by any definition, especially Baudellaire’s.

Walking the Streets: Topic 2

Frank O’Hara, in his poems on walking around New York, aspires to be a dandy—and preaches that others should do the same. A dandy, as defined by Charles Baudelaire, is one who believes in the “aristocratic superiority of his mind,” using “time and money” to expand their imaginative valor (107-108). O’Hara bemuses on the city, noticing the “hum-colored cabs” and “bargain wrist-watches with a droll, humorous tone. He recognizes the mundane objects of New York for what the actually are: pieces of the modern society, correct in their placement, as would be a simple toga in ancient Rome. As a true dandy, O’Hara states that, “I know you love Manhattan, but you ought to look up more often,” criticizing the small-minded from combining their imagination with the brilliantly, simple aspects of the city.

Response to #4

Frank O’Hara’s poetry is a perfect example of the timeless and contemporaneous beauty that Charles Baudelaire describes in his writings. Baudelaire explains that beauty has two components: one “eternal and invariable,” the other “of a relative circumstantial element.” O’Hara frequently refers to names and places important to his current position, but the sentiments he expresses are felt in all periods. For example, in his poem “The Day Lady Died,” he explains that he “will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner and I don’t know the people who will feed me.” The specifics of the time and place of his train stop are taken from his life as a New Yorker; a train ride is familiar to almost all residents of the city. The idea that he plans dinner without knowing where it will come from strikes a universal note. It is certainly relatable to a New Yorker who has an entire city of cooks ready to prepare a meal. There are also those who reside in all cities and towns who know they must eat at some point, but have no one to feed them, and no resources to get food themselves. On the other hand, there are the fortunate ones who plan to be fed because they always have someone willing to do their service, for money, for fame, for love. O’Hara describes a feeling that is born from his personal life, but is applicable to people of all situations and times. This is the beauty of that Baudelaire speaks of, one line of one poem connecting all of humanity.

Response to Question Number 3

O'Hare captures modern experience through his poems by Baudelerarie's defintion of modernity because O'Hare writes about a speciffic, time and place, (New York) as oppossed to a tangible concept or feeeling. Baudelerarie says modernirty is " the transient, the fleeting, and the contingent" which applies to O'Hare's poems because O'Hare captures a moment in time and culminates historical and culture to his work. When reading his poems, one has to look at it in context which is why, certainw words and phraes are cited, because to the reader, the reader of 2007, these are just words of the past that bare no meaning on today's world. O"Hare's work is "tranisent" because it illustrates a speciffic perspective only relative to his readers when it first came out. Modernism is a constant change due to the fact that technolgy, trends, people, and the world, are constantly changing. In "The Day Lady Died", O'Hare says, " I am getting into a cab at 9th and 1st Ave and the Negro driver tells me about a $120 apartment...". This is a perfect example of how O'Hare's work fits into Baudeleraie's defintion of modernity because of the short lived or "tranisent" subjects that he speaks of. The word "Negro" is out of date and only pertains to a certain time in American history as well as an apartment costing "$120 dollars" because New York realestate has gone increasingly up, and by today's standards, they both sounds ridiculous which shows how O'Hare's "modernity" was a temporary experience.

New York Haiku

Ironic fashion
Alcohol witty hipsters
The Lower Eastside

Kamala Randjelovic

Baudelaire defines a “man of the world” as one “…who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons behind all its customs” (104) and an “artist” as someone who is “…specialist, a man tied to his palette like a serf to the soil” (104). O’ Hare is both a man of the world and an artist when he utilizes his admiration of the “….eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in the capital cities” (105) as his palette. Baudelaire states that “…few men have the gift of seeing; fewer still have the power to express themselves” (106). While implying that men of the world have the capability of making the things they see “…born again on the paper…beautiful, strange and endowed with an enthusiastic life, like the soul of their creator”(106). O’Hare illustrates this practice presented by Baudelaire in his poems. Like the man of the world, in “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island”, O’Hare acknowledges the gift the sun gave him of being able to “always embrace things, people earth/ sky stars as I do, freely and with/ the appropriate sense of space”(lines 65-67). Over and Over, O’Hare uses his ability as a man of the world to observe and understand the life in his surroundings. In doing so, he becomes a specialist in his surrounding environment and use his observations as his palette to create art through words from what he sees. As O’Hare goes around New York City in “A Step Away from Them”, he transforms an everyday occurrence such as a group of laborers who “…feed their dirty/ glistening torsos sandwiches/ sandwiches/ and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets/ on”(Lines 3-6) into characters with an aesthetic symbolic role on the lines of his poem, his own work of art.

Frank O'Hara—A Man of the World and An Artist

Frank O'Hara is neither solely an artist nor solely a man of the world, he is both. Baudelaire defines an artist as "a specialist, a man tied to his palette" and a man of the world as "a man who understands the mysterious and legitimate reasons behind all its customs". O'Hara is obviously a specialist in poetry—an artist, as it is something he writes with absolute grace, fluidity, and incredible knowledge. It is in the content of his poems that readers can also discover his worldliness. One of the pieces titled "Poem" focuses on the subject of China and the Chinese people, a "mysterious race" which O'Hara evidently knows a lot about. In "A Step Away from Them" O'Hara writes about New York, a subject he knows very well and writes about frequently, but also includes references to many other worldly and slightly obscure people, for instance Jackson Pollock, Giulietta Masina and Federico Fellini, and Edwin Denby, demonstrating his own knowledge of world culture. New York is a constant in most of O'Hara's poetry, and regarding this great city one could call him an artist in Baudelaire's sense of the word.

Response to # 3

Baudelaire defines modernity as "the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable." O'Hara lends himself to being a poet of true modernity, considering Baudelaire’s definition. Poetry is an art form; therefore, O'Hara has satisfied modernity in the sense that his creation is already at least "half of art." In The Day Lady Died, O'Hara states the time "It is 12:20 in New York a Friday three days after Bastille day, yes it is 1959..." what is more fleeting than time? It will never be 12:20 in New York three days after Bastille day in 1959 again. This also proves O'Hara as capturing modern experience in his poetry. Baudelaire states that "If for the dress of the day, which is necessarily right you substitute another, you are guilty of a piece of nonsense that only a fancy-dress ball imposed by fashion can excuse." O'Hara is certainly not guilty of producing a piece of nonsense (at least not in the eyes of Baudelaire) he is concerned with the ephemeral, the immediate, "the dress of the day," there are no substitutions; he is concerned with modern circumstance. In his descriptions of the city he portrays what is happening, to himself and others, in the now; and therefore, is truly depicting the modern experience.

Artist vs World

By Baudelaire's definition alone O'Hare most certainly strikes me as a man of the world, with his emphasis on incorporating the Manhattan environment and his sporadic style which tends to imitate the absurdity of city streets and every day life. He is not a man apart, he thrives on the peculiarities and mysteriousness of people and places, "As we love at night/ birds sing out of sight/ Chinese rhythms beat/ through us in our heat/ the apples and the birds/ move us like soft words/ we couple in the grace/ of that mysteriousness."
O'Hare is doubly convincing in his role as "Man of the World" when taking a look at his life outside of his poetry. Though he wrote much and cared greatly for his prose, O'Hare didn't limit himself to a world consisting only of pen and paper. He wrote in his free time, in the stretches between living and working as an art curator. The fact that O'Hare didn't live his poetry only but was involved in a great many worldy thing speaks to his position as a travelled man.
Poetry was his passion, his greatest vehicle for translating the world he experienced so fully each and every day.

Oct 1 blog

Baudelaire defines "man of the world" as a man who knows his surroundings. Who doesn't just get by, but appreciates everything along the way. He defines an artist as one incorporates these observations in the world in his work. One who doesn't try to retrieve ideas by cooping himself away, but one who goes out and puts the world in his work, rather than his work in the world. O'Hara fits this definition. He rights with the world and surroundings in mind. You know that he walked around and took the city in before he sat down to write. He is a " man of the world" and an "artist" by Baudelaire's definition, and he would consider O'Hara a good man in the sense of his work.

Baudelaire presents us with two distinctions under one general occupation. He argues that simply being an artist is different than being a “man of the world.” In his definition, a “man of the world” is “…a man who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons behind all its customs (104).” This “man of the world” immerses himself in the day to day, observes and enjoys everything around him, and is able to reflect what he has seen back into his work. His occupation is not simply to render the world on paper, but to fully appreciate its inner workings. Conversely, an artist is defined as “…a specialist, a man tied to his palette like a serf to his soil (104).” He is more of a skilled laborer, confined and even isolated in his job rather than an active member of the community around him. Baudelaire would probably categorize Frank O’Hara as a “man of the world.” O’Hara’s writing is all about his interaction with the city, and his observations of the day. O’Hara hardly seems to be limited by his profession. Unlike many writers who write for weeks in near solitude, he seems to draw inspiration from his surroundings. He constantly makes cultural references and portrays New York in unadorned simplicity- O’Hara truly understands New York, both the city and its people, and their customs.

E.B. White

E.B. White writes of New Yorkers as people being constantly surprised by the city. However even simple things such as the specific type of soil that is created by the smog and swirling garbage is unique to only New York. The simple question of," Why do you love New York" can take on so many different meanings. Some people love the city for the diverse people, some see only the business opportunities, and others are satisfied with watching two cats in a showdown. Michel de Certeau also mentions how the city is shaped by each individual perspective. The names of streets once represented historical figures or events, but now the name of a street contains a different connotation. If someone were to ask you the names of the streets you took on your way to class then those names themselves will tell a story just by the connotations of the areas surrounding them.

9-23-07 Chertaeu and White

Cherteau writes about NYC's rules and regulations, and how these are put in place to keep things running smoothly and safely. If there were a narrow street that wasn't specified as one way, would you doubt that a taxi would take it in a second with on coming traffic because it may get him there a little faster? Would you doubt that same taxi driver to stop for pedestrians ever if there weren't street lights to stop them? But there are rules, and they do keep people safe. However White argues that even though there are these regulations to keep people safe, and even the locals of the city street know that it works, he states how everyone will always at least peak the other way of a one way street before they cross, as though they don't trust these rules. They don't trust that some taxi driver won't ram himself down a narrow street with on coming traffic and pedestrians just to get to the destination faster. Even the locals that will cross on the flashing light, and people that jet across the street between groups of traffic, they too will look the other way.

9/24/07

There are many different experiences you can have within one city, particularly New York. It caters to diversity and extremity, you can feel as though you’re living in different places or in different worlds within one place. There are moments when I look back on periods of time i’ve had living here and I can’t believe these experiences happened within the same week, year or place. When in reality they happened in the same city and possibly within the same day. E.B. White talks about asking people why they love New York. Everyone can come up with the same generic answer, or if they thought about it a very different answer, yet it all seems to be rooted in the same place. People can walk through the streets with an overwhelming feeling of unity and belonging or with an overwhelming feeling of awe and wonder, or isolation and displacement. Existing in New York City can be, in many ways, like existing in a heightened reality more extreme and more potent in it’s experience. Taking everything from life and multiplying it by millions. Thanks in part to the extremely of the situation alone, the buildings are extremely high, the population extremely dense and on and on. This creates an extreme reality but at the same time it is a contextual representation of everywhere else. Only more, and all at once, in one place at the same time and entirely manmade. White even mentions that within it’s manmade cavern “it can reproduce any natural phenomenon if in the mood.” No facet of existence is excluded.

09-23-2007

The New York city that E.B. White depicts is one of harsh nature and bold confrontations. With such a harsh city, you ask yourself how anyone would want to put up with new york city when it is simply a wasteland of harsh attitudes. The beauty of New York city is that it actually is not harsh at all. It is a mixture of so many, yet all are equal in the city. There is not one that is better than the other, for it's all more of a matter of "survival" than anything else. If you don't keep up, you'll fall down, and if you do keep up, then your one of many in a city of equals. The best parts of White's stories is that each one can have a different life and different experiences with the city and other people, but it's all really the same difficulties. New Yorkers make many sacrifices to live in the city, but in the end each and every one is rewarded by the beauty of equality in masses.

Kamala's post

In E.B White’s “Crossing the Street”, White shows how New Yorkers never trust the city streets surrounding them by when crossing the street always looking in the direction of where the cars come from and glancing towards where the cars will not come from. White labels this observation as “…an indication that people can never quite trust the self inflicted cosmos, and that they dimly suspect that some day, in the maze of well regulated vehicles and strong straight buildings, something will go completely crazy”(196). In this respect White is showing how urban dwellers challenge the structure and seemingly immaculate organization of city planners by never completley trusting thier surroundings. In other words, city dwellers will never have complete trust in the city surrounding them; they will always maintain an internal guard and apprehension. In Whites piece “Moving”, it is implied that city dwellers always leave their mark on the city in little ways, thus making it their own. “…People must inevitably leave something of themselves behind- something besides the mere residue of dust and bent paper clips and fallen coat hangers”(198). These dwellers take on a similar role to Certeau’s walkers, “…whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it” (128). As the dwellers both walk and live in the city they unknowingly make it their own and change the imprinted structure put in place by those who planned the city.These dwellers do so by inhabiting every aspect of the city from the streets to their apartment, and in turn make their surroundings what they want it to be.

City's Organazation: A View From Above & Below

In E.B. White's writings, he describes the inhabitants of New York City as living with the city, and not just in it. Each person has their own way of getting around, and their own shortcuts and pleasures they find in their everyday commute. The "city dwellers" challenge the power of city planners by using the city streets and signs as a way of making a personal connection to the surroundings, rather than simply using the signs as a means of finding thier way to where they are going. Getting somewhere becomes a large part of the experience. For example when White discusses walking to work. He says that depending on the day his walk can take anywher from fifteen minutes to two hours- due to stopping by his favorite stores, or window shopping on the way there, and notcing all of the elements that make his journey to work enjoyable to him. I feel that White's texts are particular to New York City because capture the feeling of being in such a planned out space, with so many other people, its hard to find your own space, but at the same time this city enabls you to become a part of it, and live with it, and not just in it. It does this by forcing you to look beyond the crosswalks and street signs by having so many small spaces within the larger ones, such as the storefronts and people' window boxes with plants.

In White's text from the New Yorker, he makes poignant insights about the life of a New Yorker, taking key note on every day occurences about the life style that comes with dwelling in Manhattan. There is no methodical ballet of movement and the occupence of space that occurs in Michael de Certau's "Walking in the City", people act and function in order to live. By "creating space", Certau implies that the New York indivual is significant enough to find room to fit in order to get from Point A to Point B. White on the other hand speaks of the realities that people have to endure and put up with it and the coping mechanisms that come with living in a cosmopolitan city such as escapng to Bryant Park for a resource of nature. It comes with the terrority of living in a big city, the adjustments and sacrafices of personal space.One does not "make space" or find a way to eb your own, you become completetly emeshed and wrapped up in the New York life. You become part of the space, not by dodging people r walking in an eratic function, just by finding the beauty and simplicites of the city. All of White's texts give substance and another perspective on the life lived as a New Yorker.

E. B. White approaches the city with the kind eye of a man surveying his home. He knows the back streets, privately owned stores, and specially markets with a kind of intimacy. To him, the city is a living, breathing personality with whom he lives in accord. White’s character challenges city planners by enjoying the city as it is instead of maintaining a businesslike approach to walking around. In the writing of de Certeau, the city appears maze-like and almost mischievously deceptive. Though he describes its beauty and glory from above, he clearly feels a sense of disconnect from the landscape itself.
When viewing White’s writing through the eyes of de Certeau, we can see some connection. White does meander a bit, instead of laying his words out in the more practical manner of city planning. In doing so, he also inhabits that third space through his personal interaction with the city that exists in his own head and heart. However, it could be argued that White never intended to be architectural in the first place. White’s whole style of writing these short texts is to show an informal camaraderie with the city, and that kind of attraction and affection are usually never plotted out.

E. B. White’s New York is a place of defiance. The New York City garbage man “[has] the city by the tail and [he knows] it” (195). A position that is so pitied by most people has the ability to control traffic, a power usually reserved for the highest city authority. But the garbage man is not alone is his rule; the walkers of the city have a mandate to use the roads as they please. They humor the unfortunate vehicle-drivers by looking to see if the road is clear, but both know who’s really in charge. In New York, the cars don’t let the pedestrians go; it is those on foot who allow cars to pass. But White describes the anticipation buried inside each New Yorker as he crosses the street: maybe today is the day when drivers defy expectations and barrel him down from the opposite direction. It could happen.

White describes a city where the small believe they have a unique advantage over the big. The homeless man finds satisfaction in his dearth of possessions; the workmen take pleasure in the perspective their strenuous job provides. New York defies you to discern native from visitor. Here everyone can be found in awe as though seeing New York for the first time.

The Literary City

In “Walking in the City,” Michel de Certeau asserts that “[t]he walking of passers by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to ‘turns of phrase’ or ‘stylistic figures’…The art of ‘turning’ phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path”(131). This is well applied to E.B. White’s “Writings from the New Yorker,” especially in “Walking to Work.”
As White walks the nine blocks to work, he finds himself taking, on average, forty-five minutes to complete the route. The events that delay him are those “stylistic figures” in “the art of composing a path” described by de Certeau. In taking detours to observe the happenings around him, White is undercutting the function of the streets as a mode of transportation, but in doing so creates another purpose for them as a stage for experience. By translating these events into a literary text, White presents the reader with what de Certeau describes as “a way of being in the city”(131).
In this way, White’s description of his journey leads the reader through what exists outside of the city’s function, the ‘style’ involved in being a city dweller. The text allows the reader to see the city in a fashion that draws attention to the way in which the larger structure of the city shapes the experience of those who reside there.

Response: City's Organization

My favorite example of White's urban dwellers challenging the power of city planners was his depiction of city gabagemen. I found it to be an exteremly honest representation of New york City garbagemen. The way White described them driving "like a ward boss through red lights and green, and backs his truck over the crossing with more privilege than a baby carriage on Fifth Avenue. He is as masterful as a pirate and chock-full of gusto...They have the town by the tail and they know it." This strikes me as a very apt description of NY garbagemen, considering my own experience. The other example, a more subtle one, was the description of New yorkers crossing the street the "furtive look in the opposite direction -from which no cars could possibly come...it is an indication that people can never quite trust the self-inflicted cosmos, and that they dimly suspect that some day, in the maze of well-regulated vehicules and strong, straight buildings, something will go completely craz-something big and red and awful will come tearing through town gong the wrong way on the one-ways mowing down all the faithful and the meek. Even if it's only fire engine." This is a subtle representation of the urban dwellers challenge to city planners. I would characterize the relationship between White's texts and the rest of the city as being very honest. White evokes the small things about New York in these texts that only a native New Yorker would consider or even be aware of.

City's Organization: A View from Above and Below

New York, although well-known for being a city of fastidious progress and intricate precision, is controlled more by the whims of its inhabitants. Michel de Certeau states in his essay "Walking in the City" that “the city becomes the dominant theme in political legends, but it is no longer a field of programmed and regulated operations” (130). Cities are created with rules and regulations, meant to be followed as to retain control over what can easily become a dangerous mess. One example of how city regulations, although with intentions to keep order, have been ousted by the city’s dwellers is the mechanical process of crossing the street. The New York grid system was made with one-way streets to facilitate crossing without fear of incoming traffic. E.B. White notices, in his Writings From the New Yorker, that after checking the direction in which traffic comes from, New Yorkers “always, just before stepping out into the street, also cast one small, quick, furtive look in the opposite direction—from which no cars could possible come” (195). It is human nature to break rules, leaving it impossible to trust even the most intricately conceived road-system in New York.

White's New York

In E.B. White's writings on New York the texts almost always marvel observantly at some particular facet of the city's cumulative grandeur. In "Ascension" White is amazed by the magical downward view from the New York Life Insurance Building of the city, in "The New York Garbageman" White is envious of these people and their position as unofficial kings of the city, including their ability to essentially run wild in the streets, in "New York March" White admires the capriciousness of the weather and the burgeoning spring about to seize the city, instilling it with warmth, and in "Walking to Work" White tells us just how wonderful the city can be to the point that he can rarely make it into work on time because he gets distracted by all the shops and interesting things about. Not to say that White doesn't see any faults with New York, but as shown in "Visiting Motorists", even it's faults are derived from the city being such a fantastic place to begin with, such to the point that everyone wants to come here when they have the chance to. I think it's safe to say that White's texts reflect his fondness for New York a great deal.

for 9/17

In my opinion, Didion uses New York to represent separation from what people desire. Though, in the beginning of the story she uses New York to show her individuality and independence in a city. Though she may have fely independence from others in different cities, there is nothing quite like independence in New York. People can either embrace the feeling of self-reliance and gain strength, or, as many do, they can fall flat on their faces and feel separated from everything they really long for in their lives. In this scenario I really believe that there is honest feelings of separation from strength. Didion is, for the most part, a strong woman in her element, yet when taken out of it, and into a city like New York, there are obviously going to be tugs on her mind whether she can really handle the resolve to live in the city.

A View From Above And Below

E. B. White's writing seems to present the city as some kind of irresistable amusement park where some rides are safer than others but all are undeniably exciting if only for their eccentricity. And just as amusement parks are carefully crafted for optimum enjoyment, the city is presumably crafted for optimum practicality. Yet Certeau and E.B. White both paint a more discombobulated view where the city is most alive in the spaces for which function was unaccounted for, "Finally, the functionalist organization, by privileging progress (i.e., time), causes the condition of its own possibility - space itself - to be forgotten; space thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific and political technology." Approproately, it seems to be within these forgotten spaces that White's stories thrive. For example, the unlikely success of an ailanthus seed on a building ledge, "Encouraged by light rains and heavy sootfall, it germinated. Its root immediately struck solid rock, turned quickly, and found two dead vine leaves, a cigarette butt, and a paper clip. Here were the perfect conditions for ailanthus growth." New Yorkers seem predisposed to thrive in the nether regions of the city; they appreciate the structure and basic outline of the urban blueprints but find true comfort in making the city work for them.

post

In Didion’s piece, “Goodbye to All That”, New York City is a place teetering with imbalance. In her account, only those who are young and full of dreams have a place in the city. Didion describes New York City as a place of extremes for her inhabitants. As she writes, New York is a “…city for only the very rich and very poor” (227), and a “…city only for the very young” (227). “Goodbye to All That” is therefore an ode to the fleeting illusions of youth; that magical moment between adolescence and adulthood when anything and everything is possible. Didion’s piece describes how everything that adds to the unlimited possibilities of New York is only then “…irrevocable, everything was in reach” (229). Using geographic boundaries, she delineates the magic of New York City for those who were raised there and those who arrive as newcomers. Didion notes that it is difficult for “…anyone brought up in the East to appreciate entirely what New York, the idea of New York means to us who came out of the West and the South” (231). Those who are newcomers are able to experience the city entirely in its magic; the tall buildings, the cacophony of people and sounds. In doing so, they are able to literally make the city their own. Yet, those of us raised here in New York City, know that the city was never really ours and we are simply lucky enough to be passing through.

9-17-07 question 1

Didion was at first pleased, pleasured and winded by the great city of New York. There was so much to do, and so many different people to meet. She was overwhelmed by its excitement and energy. This is what Howe referred to as "first a pull toward the city,...". Though eventually she began to miss the west. She suddenly became aware of New York's smog, traffic, and noise. All the parties she attended, she realized were the same people over and over again. She would cry. She soon after found herself traveling back to California, though over to LA. She describes the dreamy sensation she was winded with as she got back. This is the "...then a disheartened retreat." that Howe was speaking of.

Answer to Question 3

Joan Didion descirbes New York City as a temporary place where young people go to find themselves and live thier lives in the moment, and dont really worry about the future. It symbolizes a place of discovery and new experiences, as she says in her story Goodbye to All That "...everything was within reach. Just around every corner lay something curios and interesting, something I had never before seen or done or known about." It symbolizes discovery, but front a young and naive point of view because she later decribes the feeling of wanting to leave the city once she felt like it had nothing more to offer her. Joan meant this in the sense that once she became so familiar with the city that she knew every person at every party, and had been to all of the places that were once before hidden- she realized her time there was up, and she was too old to live there anymore. She says in one of the opening paragraphs her feeling of being in the city too long "In retrospect it seems to me that those days before I knew the names of all the bridges were happier than the ones that came later..."

Response to Question Number 3

In Joan Gideon's story, "Goodbye to All That", the young ingenue of Joan Gideon's past, fresh off the train from Sacramento, goes to New York with the intention to stay there for six months, which alternately turns into eight years. To Joan, New York symbolized a time in her youth, where she was free to explore and waste days without growing up. She talks about how she could waste afternoons or consequently, do as she pleases because to her, New York was just a vacation, she didn't see her life moving forward, rather, she was stationary and her actions bared no resemblence on what her future could hold. New York to her represented a care free life style in which she never had to change or take responsbility, only when Joan gets married does she begin to feel the city weigh her down and suffer from mental strife. This is because, she did something to alter her path instead of just coasting through petty parties and days of nothingness.

9/16/07

It seems everyone comes to a city to ‘become something’ or if not to make themselves a spectacle at least enjoy the show, or be at least free to be, or maybe rich. With these expectations a disappointment is most likely going to be the result. Joan Didion experiences coming to the excitement and then realizing in reality it might not be what it’s cracked up to be. One friend warned her saying basically that one day she’ll look around and notice there are no ‘new faces’. She later says that the city is ‘only for the very rich, the very poor or the very young’. Irving Howe mentions alienation and Didion experiences it. Howe also mentions the disgust and horror of being in such a populated unnatural environment (subway toilets and ancient bathhouses). If you don’t retreat from the reality of the grotesqueness of the streets alone you may notice one day, that as result of your ambitions, you’ve lost yourself. You have become so wrapped up in the responsibilities imposed upon you, which you have also imposed upon yourself, to survive your social rank and class in such an extreme environment. That you’re crying in chinese laundries’ and avoiding certain areas as Didion did because the glistening circus a city is in the mind of the spectator is revealed as an illusion when the city becomes a reality.

9/16/07

It seems everyone comes to a city to ‘become something’ or if not to make themselves a spectacle at least enjoy the show, or be at least free to be, or maybe rich. With these expectations a disappointment is most likely going to be the result. Joan Didion experiences coming to the excitement and then realizing in reality it might not be what it’s cracked up to be. One friend warned her saying basically that one day she’ll look around and notice there are no ‘new faces’. She later says that the city is ‘only for the very rich, the very poor or the very young’. Irving Howe mentions alienation and Didion experiences it. Howe also mentions the disgust and horror of being in such a populated unnatural environment (subway toilets and ancient bathhouses). If you don’t retreat from the reality of the grotesqueness of the streets alone you may notice one day, that as result of your ambitions, you’ve lost yourself. You have become so wrapped up in the responsibilities imposed upon you, which you have also imposed upon yourself, to survive your social rank and class in such an extreme environment. That you’re crying in chinese laundries’ and avoiding certain areas as Didion did because the glistening circus a city is in the mind of the spectator is revealed as an illusion when the city becomes a reality.

number one

Didion’s initial attraction to the city is that of fairy tale fascination- she sees New York as an almost permanent retreat where anything is available and possible. It is in this constant state of limbo that she seems to lose track of time and experiences things, as she mentions, like a child in an amusement park. However, her first pull, for all that it lasts a remarkably long time, isn’t grounded in reality. Like a first crush, she romanticizes the city to a point where she later finds she doesn’t want to live in the every day, and the mundane. It is not the gritty nuances of the city that she loves, but the glamour and the projection of something larger than life. She grows bored of the places she knows so intimately, and avoids them, feeling both confusion and unease at the gradual disillusionment. New York had never truly been her home; she had been a permanent visitor. Her move signaled the next stage in her life where she was ready to find a place to settle down.
The role that New York plays is both more or less unique. On one hand, that type of pull and retreat could have occurred in any other number of large and famous cities. But as Didion mentions, New York had a special meaning to her because she came from the West. New York was a completely different environment, simultaneously well known through legend and completely foreign in her personal experience. So while this story could have happened in any city, certain aspects of it happened here by virtue of the connection she had from hearing about it as a girl in the West. Even if this had happened in London or Paris, there is no guarantee she would have felt the same pull, and therefore had the same retreat.

Joan Didion expresses in her essay “Goodbye to All That” how much where she came from influenced the way she experienced New York City: “I am not sure that it is possible for anyone brought up in the East to appreciate entirely what New York…means to those of us who came out of the West and the South.” The distance provides a view of the city that heightens the excitement and surprise when one finally reaches it.

Didion entered New York with a naivety that is necessary when moving there from so far away. The city was the first stop in her adventure as a young woman, unattached and determined to live. As Didion put it, “[There] is the conviction that nothing like this…[had] ever happened to anyone before.” Life in New York is thought of in the present tense to a young newcomer, because that is all that s/he knows. If she thinks about what to do when the cold comes, or the heat, or the next bill, she would either be paralyzed from fear or retreat into denial. Unlike natives of the east, who see New York as “a plausible place to live,” migrants to the city of cities arrive to live in a different way than they have ever lived before. New York has a living that is unique to its inhabitants, brand new and full of inspiration even in the most unremarkable of happenings.

What Didion came to realize though, and everyone like her eventually does too, is that one cannot escape the reality of city-dwelling even in New York. This city has its own special harshness in addition to the universal difficulties of every city. It may be the small world of shallow relationships or the wide gap between the richest and poorest that gets to a person, like Didion encountered. Despite the density of people and opportunity in the city, eventually one may end up feeling more alone and disadvantaged than ever. At this point, Didion needed to leave the place where “she did not belong..., did not come from…” Not all who move to New York feel they must leave permanently as Didion did. In order to live in New York, one must not only embrace the whole of it as a city; one must ultimately accept life as a New Yorker.

This City's Tide (Resp. to #1)

Joan Didion wasn't the only once capable of finding harmony in the all too incongruos blend 0f "...soft air blowing from a subway grating...and lilac and garbage and expensive perfume..." In fact, the great City we now all find ourselves in possesses a peculiar power of attraction that is perhap rooted in its ability to make us forget how life in it's simplest form is supposed to behave.
Didion's own experiences in New York express perfectly Fielding's "literary pattern of discovery and withdrawal in regard to the city". For Didion, as for the literary figures of Fielding's work, the City possesses a peculiar tide which draws in the very young and idealistic. The initial allure of New York is evident to all that have ever come from locals famed for their abundance of agricultural products and seeming desregard for the modern world. Didion was not immune to New York' grandeur, the "infinately romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.". In the beginning the City holds no debts, demands nothing in return but the naive admiration of its too often struggling inhabitants. Didion was drawn in, like so many others, by the tide of a city promising "the greatest show on earth,' with 'continuous performances and endlessly changing cast."
In the end it appears that the forces which drew Didion in were ultimately those which cast her out. The multifarious NYC stage began to be too much for a woman looking for a place to hold on to. It was easy in the beginning to wrestle with perpetual stimulation and societal changes, but as Didion herself put it, she "stopped believing in new faces and began to understand the lesson in that story, which was that it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the fair." For Fielding the "City is a necessary stopping point for the education of the emotions, to be encountered, overcome, and left behind." With this model in mind, Didion performed her part perfectly, welcoming the city as a young woman with emotions to test and a mind to expand and leaving it a much older woman with a firmer grip on where she should be.

Pull and Retreat

Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That,” possesses a certain narrative pattern described by Howe as “first a pull toward the city, then a disheartened retreat”(308). Didion’s first taste of disenchantment comes the moment she steps into the terminal, “[s]ome instinct informed [her] that [New York] would never be quite the same again”(226). Romantic preconceptions like Didion’s often seem to be what draw people from afar to this city, preconceptions usually far removed from urban realities. She does manage to retain a sense of disillusionment for some time, professing to falling in love with the city and even admitting that “it never occurred to [her] that [she] was living a real life there”(230). New York was never meant, in her mind, to be her home; she was simply “a colonial in a far country”(231).
Inescapably, however, her sense of wonder about New York fades and she finds she has lived in the city for too long. Prompted by her age and consequential disillusionment, she "retreats" as Howe prescribed to her “point of origin” in California (308). Yet something remains for Didion, and this is something singular to New York. There is no other city, with perhaps the exception of Paris, with such a reputation to hold; there is no city so often made example of, so often written of, or so frequently made the archetypal urban setting. New York, for all its faults, is still the nexus of urbanity and the model which all cities are pitted against as centers of culture, art, and raw humanity. For this reason, it seems to stand alone as a city of the homeless, a place only to visit and forever unreal, even in the minds of those who have resided there.

The Symbol of New York

In Joan Didion's story "Goodbye to All That", New York represents a symbol of Didion's procrastination and unwillingness to move forward in her life. While in New York she does not count her experiences as being part of real life like other people there do, and instead she sees the city as a "mirage". For Didion, New York is indicative of a dilatory limbo in which she thinks she doesn't have to grow up yet and face the world. As a twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three year old she is really on her own for the first time in her life, especially without the support and guidance of school anymore, and she doesn't want to be the adult that she is. Didion believes that things don't count there, that she can stay out all night until the sun comes up and then go to work with only two hours of sleep, and that she can hop endlessly from party to party (good or bad, as she states) whenever she pleases. New York is Didion's dreamworld, the place that isn't real, and that she isn't really in.

Response to question #5

There is a distinct difference between Didion's New York and the descriptions of European cities in the Howe text. Howe's quotes Smollett, the "connoisseur of sewage." Smollett when reffering to Bath, a European city, asks the reader to "imagine to yourself a high exaltes essence of mingled odors, arising from putrid gums, imposthumated lungs, sour flatulencies, rank arm-pits, sweating feet, running sores." He evokes the image of a decaying, inimical city, beyond uninviting. Howe whe referring to London quotes Dickens saying he "sees London as a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy of its sky...a heap of vapour charged with muffled sounds of wheels and enfolding a muffled catarrh." Again a European city is described in a putrid, vile light. Didion's New york is "no mere city . It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself." New york to Didion somewhat represents the notion of the American Dream. Howe addresses suffering, poverty, and unadulterated misery in the modern day literary European city, whereas Didion concerns herself with parties, Madison avenue, F.A.O Schwartz, brownstones, and Henri Bendel. She barely skims the surface of poverty, the closest she comes is describing out of work writers. She sees in New york the "sweet promises of money and summer," evoking an Upper East Side slightly antiquated version of "Sex in the City" where her biggest problem is despair, boredom, and injuring herself on an alchoholic beverage. Never the less in the true spirit of frivilous New York she is saved by a phone call from a man in an office wishing to take her to L.A.

The City in Literature- Topic 3

The character in Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” holds New York City on a pedestal of supreme and insurmountable excellence. A young, innocent girl from the West Coast, she could only fantasize ideas of the city based on the scant facts she knew about it:

But to those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were not at all places but abstractions (“Money,” and “High Fashion,” and “The Hucksters”), New York was no mere city. (231)

New York held a fictitious role in her mind: a happy place that she could visit only in her head because nothing so spectacular could actually exist in the real world. Once she finally gets to the city, she throws herself into it expecting a never ending stream of the excitement she always imagined. She gets it, but with the excitement comes “despair” which isn’t so dreamlike (237). She learns that New York can be that happy place she always envisioned, but with the dream comes harsh reality.