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Big Abel and the Little Manhattan
The book then; the book of William's brain and Mary's hope, wasn't printed yet; not quite bought and paid for, come to that. But it was in a fair way. There wouldn't be another great book from England under a month, and there was a fine time to lay his egg in the sun and have it hatched. It'll chirp merrily, I warrant you, when it's once out!
93 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1970
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July 21, 2009
Weird, weird, mid-nineteenth century book. 1842? no, 1845. Mathews was a friend and contemporary of Evert Duyckinck (think encyclopedia) Melville, and was criticized regularly by Poe. His style seems almost postmodern at times, especially this work, whose structure takes loose shape around a walk.
A walking tour through the City of New York taken by Big Abel (Henry Abel Hudson, the descendant of the city's "founder," Henry Hudson) and the Little Manhattan (Lankey Fogle, descendant of Chief Manhattan, the city's native occupant). The two meet under that ghostly, panoptic edifice, the Shot-Tower - always exerting its haunting gaze over the city's bustling industry and expansion - to eschew ten years of hopeless adjudication to divide the city between them. Abel claims all industry, trade, and architecture; to Lankey is left only the abject margins of the city, those places where poverty, vice, and a demeaned spirit of nature hold strong despite the city's efforts to civilise itself. Abel is clearly the winner in this experimental allegory; he draws his "proofs" from a secret (gothic) oblong iron box to empty any claims that Lankey makes upon his commercial expansion. Lankey's gaze is backward, his claims often silent; desiring only that the island reassert its natural domain over the human artifice built upon it, Lankey fails to extend his visionary spirit forward and thus hopes paradoxically for removal at the novel's end, "against his will, back to his old drear wilderness, and lose himself in dusky lodges and by silent paths as though he had never been" (92). But such will never come: rather, the Little Manhattan must "wander as a shade, the city-hills, the city-slopes ... dwindling like a spirit to the city's eye, while he, Big Abel, waxes on sturdier by every street he walks, by every square he builds" (92).
For Lankey, the walking tour is marked with anxiety, fear, and a hopeless sadness. For Abel, the walk is a celebration, punctuated by the "Entertainment" atop the Banking-house roof. Abel's walk is propietary, while Lankey's resembles the funeral processions that dot the novels pages throughout. Two modes of walking, in stark contrast, are juxtaposed here, and the one eclipses the other while (or by) simultaneously monumentalizing and mythologizing it. An example of Latourian purification, to be sure, but one done with the uncanny eye of a nonmodern bent on exposing the vast assemblages of hybrids needed to maintain such urban expansion.
A walking tour through the City of New York taken by Big Abel (Henry Abel Hudson, the descendant of the city's "founder," Henry Hudson) and the Little Manhattan (Lankey Fogle, descendant of Chief Manhattan, the city's native occupant). The two meet under that ghostly, panoptic edifice, the Shot-Tower - always exerting its haunting gaze over the city's bustling industry and expansion - to eschew ten years of hopeless adjudication to divide the city between them. Abel claims all industry, trade, and architecture; to Lankey is left only the abject margins of the city, those places where poverty, vice, and a demeaned spirit of nature hold strong despite the city's efforts to civilise itself. Abel is clearly the winner in this experimental allegory; he draws his "proofs" from a secret (gothic) oblong iron box to empty any claims that Lankey makes upon his commercial expansion. Lankey's gaze is backward, his claims often silent; desiring only that the island reassert its natural domain over the human artifice built upon it, Lankey fails to extend his visionary spirit forward and thus hopes paradoxically for removal at the novel's end, "against his will, back to his old drear wilderness, and lose himself in dusky lodges and by silent paths as though he had never been" (92). But such will never come: rather, the Little Manhattan must "wander as a shade, the city-hills, the city-slopes ... dwindling like a spirit to the city's eye, while he, Big Abel, waxes on sturdier by every street he walks, by every square he builds" (92).
For Lankey, the walking tour is marked with anxiety, fear, and a hopeless sadness. For Abel, the walk is a celebration, punctuated by the "Entertainment" atop the Banking-house roof. Abel's walk is propietary, while Lankey's resembles the funeral processions that dot the novels pages throughout. Two modes of walking, in stark contrast, are juxtaposed here, and the one eclipses the other while (or by) simultaneously monumentalizing and mythologizing it. An example of Latourian purification, to be sure, but one done with the uncanny eye of a nonmodern bent on exposing the vast assemblages of hybrids needed to maintain such urban expansion.
Displaying 1 of 1 review