The Third New York

Yesterday I ran across this excerpt from E.B. White's Here is New York:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the

man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and

accepts its size, 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 New York of

the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of

something. Of these 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 disposition, 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 passion.

That third New York is what I wanted to depict in The First Stone because it is the one we foreigners see — the city of dreams on film — and also because it is that version of New York that is a direct challenge to the view of America that the fundamentalist Revivalists cherish. This is the 'Real America' canard that the GOP are leaning on so hard. It is a simple morality fable of the pious countryside and corrupt city, the same damn story people have told themselves since Babylon. Never mind that most Americans, real or fake, don't live in small towns anymore, that this oppressed homogenous Protestant majority they claim to spring from has never really existed. The idea of New York, the immigrant metropolis, even the physical geography of the city, is a living challenge to the America they wish to bring about, at the end of a gun if necessary. New York is a fundamentally different idea of what America is than the caricature of the modern Right sells, and that's why the city is the perfect place for a showdown between those two visions.