Here is New York

When I landed in New York on Friday night it was 60 degrees, a whopping 40 degrees cooler than Nashville was when I left it. Blue skies and not a cloud in sight on Saturday and Sunday. It was a charmed weekend from the start.

A weekend full of good literary stuff too, lest anyone thinks I was slacking off. Friday afternoon I almost spontaneously combusted in the airport bookstore...when did those places start getting the good books??? I was really tempted to buy another copy of Eat, Pray, Love after having given at least six copies away as presents (managed to resist that temptation for only 24 hours, after which time I impulsively bought a 20% off copy in a Barnes & Noble on Union Square). The stuff is too good. It's something to do with Elizabeth Gilbert's self-deprecating humor and her ability to articulate some pretty heady thirty-something philosophy. I promise to return to this memoir and devote a full post once I've finished rereading it.

So back to the airport bookstore...I ended up with Richard Ford's new novel The Lay of the Land, which, according to its front cover, was a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year. I don't doubt its worthiness either. Here's the first line: "Last week, I read in the Asbury Press a story that has come to sting me like a nettle..."

By the time I boarded the plane I had a harem of books in my bag, but unfortunately the turbulence made it kind of difficult to focus on reading. I worked on my toast for Courtney's thirtieth instead. This coincidentally had its own literary angle. I wanted to celebrate Court's ability to thrive in NYC for the last eight years - count'em! - and to point out how she has contributed to what E. B. White would describe as the best and brightest of three very different New Yorks.

Here's what I realized amidst the turbulence: I've read and reread White's "Here is New York" essay two dozen times, but until Friday I always thought he was referring to three different types of New Yorkers. Not so. He says quite plainly that there are "roughly three New Yorks"25):

There is the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last - the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York's high-strung dispostion, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it its passion" (26).

At about this time in the actual toast I had to give out demerits for someone's phone ringing(Yep, I'm a teacher). But the point here is that I wholeheartedly concur: the place is the people. It is not after all Central Park; it is not the Met; it is not the insanely good shopping and the good food; and it is not the East Village that makes New York New York. It is people like Courtney who make Manhattan. And this is perhaps something you can only realize once you have lived in and left such an extraordinary place. A visit would not be complete without seeing those we love who still make the city the eccentric and wonderful metropolis that it is.

While snooping around Court's stash of books on Saturday - and she has some great ones - I discovered a book that I had been meaning to buy after reading the review. That is until I forgot about it. But here it was on her coffee table: Logan Ward's recent memoir titled See You in a Hundred Years. Apparently the author and his wife chose to bail on New York and settle on a farm in Staunton, VA. But they didn't just settle: they decided to forego any and all amenities invented after the candle. As a Virginian I was hooked just from the premise, but a skim through the prologue confirmed that it would be a really good read. The guy has an ego though. I predict this is going to get him into serious trouble while dairy farming or whatever he is doing in Staunton.

This superlong post would not be complete without a mention of Spring Awakening,the play that we saw on Saturday afternoon. Getting to see this play was like having Christmas or Easter in the middle of August. I was simply blown away by it. It was the kind of play that required an hour's walk around the city just to digest and discuss all the marvelous and serious and heartbreaking aspects that it introduced. Sigh. Go see it if you have the chance.