Tag Archives: New York

#34: The Thieves of Manhattan

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It is tempting to those of us lucky enough to live in New York to regard all other terrestrial locations with a healthy measure of disdain, concrete-jungle style. Whether these streets make you feel brand new or merely terrified of the ubiquitous tourists, one is virtually forced to concede, via self-admission or the coercion of one’s provincial fellow dwellers, that there is something special in the Manhattan air.

It was thus endlessly satisfying to read Adam Langer’s incurably readable The Thieves of Manhattan, a brilliant send-up of the publishing industry that eviscerates its corporate villains in the same spirit (and methodology, somewhat) with which Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation once scorned Hollywood. As has been noted elsewhere, Langer’s prose is so hip as to require a glossary (provided in the back): franzens are “the sort of stylish eyeglasses favored by the author Jonathan Franzen;” a hemingway refers to “a particularly well-constructed and honest sentence;” to woolf is “to move as rapidly as the speed of thought.” (No word yet on danbrowning; that is, concocting a novel out of random amalgamations of nouns, verbs, and a mountain of italics so voluminous that one suspects the author has been monetarily incentivized.)

Most of the novel takes place on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. As a resident of this neighborhood, I found myself nodding with delight over casual mentions of the Hungarian Pastry Shop or 106 Bar (although I have yet to visit the latter). Clearly Langer is a man familiar with his territory.

That territory is only partially geographical. Of greater interest is the author’s irreverent poking and prodding of the esteemed literati. He labels sections with titles such as “A Million Little Pieces” and “Naked Came the Stranger,” allusions to works of literature later exposed as frauds. To Langer, the line separating fact from fiction is prime comedic material, and he clearly relishes the zigzagging trail he weaves endlessly to and fro across it.

What, then, is The Thieves of Manhattan all about? Facially, it involves a failing writer, Ian, whose Romanian girlfriend, Anya Petrescu, begins to garner the attention of publishers with her short-story collection We Never Talked About Ceauşescu. (One can almost picture Langer’s maniacal laughter as he penned that title.) Not only does Anya show literary promise, not only is her compilation “heartbreaking and beautiful and self-effacing and charming and hilarious,” but “most of all, [it was] true.” And so begins Anya’s ascent into the upper echelons of the increasingly pretentious and self-absorbed world of commercial authors, whilst Ian’s career fades ever faster.

It is at this point, near the book’s beginning, that Ian meets Jed Roth, a mysterious stranger whose intimate knowledge of the publishing industry is matched only by his hatred for all aspects of it. Roth begins to regale Ian with tales from his days as a big dog in the world of books. The longer the story continues, the more hilarity ensues as Langer embraces the genres of the cheap and gaudy in his own writing. The end of one section reads: “‘You can’t leave when I’m talking to you, Jed,’ Merrill said. ‘Of course I can,’ Roth responded. ‘Because I don’t work for you anymore.'” This is beautiful, and almost makes me want to reread some of my favorite dime-store fare. (Almost.)

I hesitate to say more, because reading this book is an experience unto itself, replete with ironic winks and over-the-top melodrama. The final section, as others have noted, goes on perhaps a few moments too long, but this hardly spoils the journey. Adam Langer has managed to wring true literature out of a terrible story, or perhaps it is vice versa. Either way, if The Thieves of Manhattan is to follow the path of all commercially successful books, it most assuredly demands a sequel.

Subway culture and the panhandler

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I lived for nine years in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a town of crooked one-way streets, Irish bars, and, perhaps most ubiquitously, innumerable homeless people. Living in and amongst those same streets and watering holes, Boston’s displaced roam freely, their casual insouciance unperturbed by the occasional disapproving policeman or irritable bench neighbor. The city, while perhaps not embracing them, at least affords them a generous measure of nomadic self-determination, and for that reason Boston remains a favorite sanctuary for the housing-challenged.

This is not to say these hardy men and women are without want. When their cash flow devolves into a steady trickle downstream, our homeless friends take to the subway — the T, as it is known — and, in the spirit of of the First Amendment, brazenly wield their vocal chords to great effect in pursuit of, if not happiness itself, its closest approximation as embodied by a fast-food meal or a bottle of Jim Beam. This commonly takes the form of a bleating voice in which the plaintive tones of defeat can clearly be heard: “Can you spare some change?”

It is more a statement than a question, even as its last syllable hangs desperately in the air, an unresolved dissonance calling for resolution. The sincerity is as evident as the tact is lacking: money is needed. Whether for drugs or food, alcohol or medicine, we neither know nor care; they are here, among us, and the choice is ours. We toss a bill or two their way, or we do not. We look away, avert our eyes. We do not remember them, nor they us; strangers passing in the night, all.

New York’s subway system is home to investment bankers, Mexican accordion players, and apathetic Upper West Siders. Broadway houses the nation’s finest productions, but the real theater, unfolding in stuttered moments, performs for free somewhere between 96th Street and Park Place on the 2 line. Here the homeless traipse through subway cars, plying their craft as they wedge their way through the tired ranks of the gainfully employed.

The last time I shared a New York subway car with a panhandler, I felt as if I were listening to a sales pitch. I was. While a bit melodramatic for my taste, one cannot argue with the $2.25 price of admission. Words such as “interim” and “requisite” filled the air, as New Yorkers turned back to their New Yorker in silence. One is constantly under the impression of having seen this particular solicitor before, perhaps on the same train line. The pleas for money are theatrical (and thus memorable), recalling a failed actor blandly reciting lines that have long since lost all meaning. They inevitably begin with some variation of “I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to disturb you,” but of course they do. Trust has left the building, or at the very least the subway car, and empathy along with it. I do not drop money into the hat.

I’m not sure why Boston and New York diverge in this way, nor will I ever, most likely. It is merely one of the myriad aspects in which the compressed millions that comprise our modern cities coalesce into collective entities of their own. Somehow, these cities of random individuals gain distinctive, differentiated, holistic identities; somehow homeless culture becomes but one among countless mirrors reflecting these. Personally, I can respect the Bostonian directness, a challenge to the general public to lend a helping hand. I feel no such affinity for the New Yorker, who, borrowing the cadence of a stage voice and the persuasive technique of a politician, alienates me before completing a sentence. Like everything related to Boston and New York (especially as felt by a Bostonian), one of the two must be superior. Somewhere, a master panhandler is crafting the perfect pitch, and waiting for its debut in the city.

#2: Let the Great World Spin

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Adorning the front cover of Colum McCann’s latest novel, Let the Great World Spin, is a circular insignia with the caption “National Book Award Winner.” Dave Eggers, in a review excerpt, promises the reader (s)he will be “giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed,” and on the back cover Frank McCourt frets about the impossibility of a comparable followup for McCann.

These are all good signs. And fortunately for the author and his loyal readers, they ring (mostly) true. His is a tale of grief, loss, hope, codependency, death, rebirth, and a host of other themes and narratives, all interwoven with fragility. However, it is this very fragility that at times seems forced, even summoning to mind — in what is possibly a sacrilegious comparison, though I’m not certain to whose detriment — Paul Haggis’ 2004 film Crash. Both works attempt to gather together the broken pieces of human lives in an urban metropolis and make sense of them in a way that accounts for their similarities and their differences.

And yet in so doing, McCann occasionally undermines the realism of his otherwise gritty, up-close-and-personal feel. Reading this book can sometimes feel like walking down the street while tethered to a helium balloon; one is mostly on the ground but is periodically compelled to float up and into the clouds. This may appear to be an appropriate metaphor for a novel in which a tightrope walker hops, skips, and dances between the World Trade Center towers, soaring above the city and its inhabitants, but the execution felt a tad incredible, if not cheap.

For example, one of the novel’s characters presides in a courtroom in which four other people central to the story are present. It’s not that this is abnormal — aren’t interconnected stories a staple of many modern novels, especially ones set in a city like New York? — but McCann sneaks these facts up on you as if his salary is measured in “ohhh”s and ”hmm”s: “The bridge stepped away and cleared her throat. Docket ending six-eight-seven, she said. The People versus Tillie Henderson and Jazzlyn Henderson. Step up, please.” (Hmm, so Tillie was tried in Soderberg’s courtroom. Now it’s all coming together.)

Is there a better way to tell these stories? Honestly, I’m not sure. Perhaps McCann could’ve simply begun the story with scenes making explicit the connections among the main characters. Or maybe I’m just inherently skeptical of any book with an ensemble cast that must magically coalesce over the course of three hundred-plus pages. Complicating matters further is the way in which McCann slides in and out of voices, often with a strange affection for racial and class stereotypes, from a young graffiti enthusiast snapping photos on the subway to an upper-class wife grieving over her perished son to Tillie Henderson, a prostitute from the Bronx, all while skipping from the first-person voice to the third and back again. Expounds Tillie: “I was the first nigger absolute regular on that stroll. They called me Rosa Parks. They used to say I was a chewing-gum spot. Black. And on the pavement. That’s how it is in the life, word. You joke a lot.” Hmm indeed.

And yet, if asked if Let the Great World Spin were a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, I’d place it (and not too reluctantly) into the former category. If the reader focuses less on the chance intersections of the characters and more on the individuality of each of their stories, the novel is strangely more complete. Let the Great World Spin hovers in that gray area between a collection of thematic vignettes and a cohesive novel. In the end, I suppose it is a little of both, which is quite possibly exactly what Colum McCann had in mind in the first place. In which case: Well done, sir. You’ve written a fine novel, word.