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.