New York is nothing like Paris; it is nothing like London; and it is not Spokane multiplied by sixty, or Detroit multiplied by four.
E.B. White, Here is New York
About a decade ago, my partner and I began what has become a cherished tradition: spending Thanksgiving in New York with dear friends. Unlike what tends to happen as traditions over time become burdensome obligations, our annual trek to New York is one I look forward to all year. Despite the primary reason for making the trip being consistent, every visit has been distinctive probably because New York is one city that offers endless possibilities for new discoveries. What Samuel Johnson said of one of my other favorite cities, London, “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life[,]” could also be said of New York.
While anticipating last year’s trip, I stumbled upon a copy of E.B. White’s Here is New York. I marvel at the handful of works that have truly managed to capture the spirit of a place in words, and White’s New York is what I consider the epitome of such writing. The work is contemplative, clever, incisive and, most importantly, concise – comprising a mere 7500 words – proving that even ample New York doesn’t mandate that an appropriate tribute must be exhaustive and exhausting.
White wrote New York “in the summer of 1948 during a hot spell” after having been away from the city for several years, which may have allowed White to view the city with refreshed, if not fresh, eyes. Upon rereading New York for this post, the passion and excitement alive in White’s writing struck me more profoundly than before. Imbued with such a depth of feeling, New York moves beyond a mere vicarious treat for the reader into inspiration to seek and discover one’s own New York.
White’s quote I placed at the beginning of this post struck me as the perfect retort for those who proclaim dislike for cities or express dismay at urban allure. Many cities – the important ones – exude a spiritual core that defies reductive analysis. A city’s essence comes from the complexity of its evolution: a mixture of human ambition and creative endeavors and necessity and desire. It is not in its concrete or its capital, both of which are merely modern-day raw materials aiding expression. Conveying such elusive character remains the primary challenge for any writer working in this genre.
But there is another element to a city’s homage that may alienate the modern reader: a sense of longing for what no longer exists. As soon as pen weds paper to immortalize a scene from a city’s life, it is gone forever. I will never capture the New York of Here is New York just as White was unable, in gathering inspiration for his essay, to recapture his New York of the 1920s.
The inherent sadness that permeates any travelogue, while oppressive to some, communicates our common condition in struggling to share our experiences with others. Absent some ability to describe the future (maybe this explains the popularity of science fiction), we are doomed to offer mere descriptions of the past. But that isn’t such a bad thing is it? The New York of 2009 is most certainly not the New York of 1948, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something to be discovered on a traveler’s own terms that may be reminiscent of something wonderful from another era. After all, isn’t that what we mean when we speak of a place being timeless?