Let The Great World Spin - Overall & Links (April 2014)

[Deborah]

I live here. I think it may seem less jarring because of that.

[Julie]

Lily wrote: "Has our discussion of Let the Great World Spin come to its natural closure for this month or are there others out there who either have more to say or just haven't gotten a chance to..."

I am slowly making my way through the audiobook (not even halfway yet). It's not the ideal book for audio for me. I concentrate better with more plot heavy stories that have less to think about, so I am only listening when I am feeling in the right mood when I am commuting. But I didn't vote in the poll either. :-)

[LindaJ^]

I think most cities have their own signature. I have spent many hours walking in big cities in the US, UK, and Europe (I know the UK is in Europe, but it really does not feel European!). While there are many similaries, there are also great contrasts. And New York City is not like any other US city. LTGWS felt like NYC to me, with all its jarring contrasts.

[Lily]

Deborah wrote: "I live here. I think it may seem less jarring because of that."

I didn't -- I grew up about as far from the environment of NYC as one can get in the U.S. But I did work there for over five years, both Financial District and Midtown, and still visit frequently. My son has lived, worked, and gone to school in various parts of the City. We have friends and acquaintances in the boroughs. While certainly there are "jarring" elements and events, "jarring" is still not a term I would use to describe the ambiance of the City. Fast-paced and diverse, yes. Yet, somehow, the overall affect is more pleasing, more exciting, more additive than "jarring" implies for me. Probably just my bias about the word and about the City.

[LindaJ^]

Having reviewed a few definitions of "jarring," I think it can be used in that there are things in the city that are "not in harmony" in a "striking" way. Is it an adjective for the feel of NYC as a whole? Maybe not. But for someone new to NYC, first exposure can be very jarring. I took a young associate with me on a business trip to our NY office. He found the intensity of the city and the almost all night activity to be very jarring with his, to then, life experience, which was pretty much limited to Central Pennsylvania. That made me remember my first trip to the city for the World's Fair -- which was jarring at the time for a young teen from rural Maine! For the first time visitor who walks through a rather bucolic Central Park during the day and a neon lights-flashing, people-packed, Times Square during the evening (whether in 1964 or 2014), the contrast may well be jarring.

[Lily]

Linda wrote: "...But for someone new to NYC, first exposure can be very jarring...."

Yes, it is partly what one brings to the experience. The one-classroom midwestern rural school I attended for grade school had a book in its library with pictures of the skyscrapers and street caverns of lower Manhattan. I remember well the year I turned thirty and couldn't believe I was interviewing for work in one of those buildings. Then the Statue of Liberty could be spied from my office -- later it would be the George Washington Bridge. I shall always remember when the Path started running again that summer and nine escalators moved upward together in the WTC, filled with men in pin-striped suits and so many women in the '70's de rigueur garb of professionals. It bothered me deeply just before Christmas this past year to see a homeless woman huddled by a lamp post on Fifth Avenue, within a block of either St. Thomas or St. Patrick's Cathedrals, with hundreds streaming past with full shopping bags bearing some of the most prestigious brand names on the globe. But "harshly disagreeable or disconcerting" is still too negative for my over-arching perception of that vast city -- even the summer the garbage stank.

[Lily]

Below is an annotated excerpt from an interview of Colum McCann appearing in the NYT here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/boo...

(view spoiler)[Colum McCann: By The Book
....
What books are currently on your night stand?

I’ve a tower of books by the bed, on quite a range of subjects. I’m reading Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial, which is a brilliantly researched dissection of what went on at Memorial hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. It reads like a Saramago novel. I have a number of advance reading copies of novels I’m looking forward to reading, especially Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings. I have books by Zia Haider Rahman, Philipp Meyer, Jennifer Finney Boylan, George Singleton and several collections of poetry. Also, I have two old reliables that I go back to again and again — Stoner, by John Williams, and The Meadow, by James Galvin. The Meadow defies classification — it’s a memoir, a scrapbook, a novel and a poem rolled into one. For my sins I live in the heart of New York City, and reading about Galvin’s landscape calms me and brings me elsewhere.

Who is your favorite novelist of all time? And your favorite novelist writing today?

Choosing a favorite living novelist is like walking the plank: Inevitably you end up drowning, but at least it’s in a sea of heroes. Peter Carey. Michael Ondaatje. Toni Morrison. Don DeLillo. Jim Harrison. Roddy Doyle. Aleksandar Hemon. Nathan Englander. Jennifer Egan. Edna O'Brien. Joe O'Connor. John Berger. My terror is that I will forget someone that I really should mention, because so many of them have become friends now.

Still, the living hold the imaginations of the dead — and, for me, James Joyce is the original energy behind all contemporary literature.

What’s on your list of best Irish literature? Do you have a favorite book about Ireland, or about the Irish in America?

One of my favorite books has to be Proxopera, by Benedict Kiely. It’s one of those secret classics, a novella about a retired schoolteacher who is forced to drive a bomb from his house into his boyhood town on what is called a “proxy operation.” It’s a perfect piece of literature and encapsulates the sadness and terror of what went on in Northern Ireland during what is euphemistically called “the Troubles.”

For the Irish in America, go no further than Bill Kennedy. I will never forget the first time I cracked open Ironweed. All the oxygen was gone from the air. It was thrilling.

Also, I have to say that in terms of contemporary Irish literature, nobody has turned it inside out as profoundly as Roddy Doyle; he’s one of our greats.

(hide spoiler)]