Bobbin' the Big Bad Apple

New York is home to the exile, native and immigrant alike.

It is a place for those who couldn't possibly live anywhere else. Oh, they could, possibly - New Yorkers believe they can do everything - but they'd much rather not. We who have lived there will always have New York, our New York. They who live there still, have theirs still; and those who will live there tomorrow or the next year will have theirs too. All will be as differently alike as everyone else's.

It's this individual commonality that gives New York much of its poignancy. No matter how high you fly, how low you crawl, how invisible you try to be, how much you think you know, New York will break your heart.

The Collossus of New YorkPerhaps that's why Colson Whitehead's The Colossus of New York (Doubleday $19.95) so pains me. An exiled exile, I know too well what it's like to be made to live elsewhere. A veteran tough (ha ha), I feel all too deeply what becomes of a broken heart. And like the best New Yorkers, I like to be reminded of my New York, however long ago it was, however faraway it may be, however much it hurts.

Every nuance of Whitehead's Colossus is pure New York. No, it's not the New York of Circle Line snaps (though there are Circle Line sights), and it's not the New York of anomalous double-decker gaps (though he does hit some of the same byways). Rather this is the New York in the Just-like-I-whispered-it dreams of the kid down the block, the girl on the corner, the man in the gray flannel suit of armor.

It's also kinda like that game where you imagine what the other person does for a life, what that couple over there isn't saying to each other, who he's waiting for by the door, whom she most misses. The difference here is that Whitehead seems not to be imagining things. Somehow he's sidled up to our subconscious and wrenched away our secrets.

How dare he.

Well, 'cause Whitehead's a New Yorker, and more than any other single thing, New Yorkers dare, each time they leave the apartment, every time they cross the street, with all undue respect. And then some. Having dared, Whitehead's got some insight into what dooms the daring.

And he knows how to write it: "Twilight is a mask factory" ("Downtown"); "These days disappointment is modular" ("Rush Hour"); "So squint search the eyes of the people for kindred glint" ("Brooklyn Bridge"). And he knows how to call it: Times Square is "a sickness," Broadway "will undo you bit by bit," mornings "will kill you with their trap doors," and, in Central Park, "everything is still terrible." Even bright Coney Island is where people only go when they "fall to the bottom of the subway map."

But Whitehead's four-color noirs are less a melancholic's gloom and more a case of gargantuan solemnity. Here, size matters, and it's best to give it its due. A cracked theorist might call it creeping giganticism: New York is as big - and as bad- as it says it always said it'd be. Why would you think it'd be any different?

Ahem.

In "JFK," Whitehead says that "talking about New York is a way of talking about the world." Brash, perhaps, then New Yorker's do tend to be brash. And bold. Hence they're unafraid to brashly and boldly go where too many few may have gone before. After all, they've got the goods. Whitehead's own goods include a lyricist's tongue, a novelist's eye, an eavesdropper's ear, and Toucan Sam's nose, which he follows with willful abandon. Duly endowed, he susses out nothing less than the arcana of our lives. Keen, he sees what we see when we close our eyes and open our souls. Slyly written in he/she/them/they anonymity, this thirteen-part mini series gets to specifics without being too specific, unmasks the personal without making it too personal. Like a lensman's literary flipbook compiled from a diary found on the street.

Chances are you won't get what I got out of The Colossus of New York, just as your New York will not be the same as mine. That's the beauty of the Big Bad Apple. We each have our own bob. We each have our own weave. Combined and compounded, the bobs and the weaves make a tapestry. It's how we clothe ourselves in the naked city. It's also why we dig strip joints, and why we need good books: so that we can read between the moves. This is that read.

On "Brooklyn Bridge," our fearless prowler faces the city and offers an apt observation: "Against that skyline we are as brief as a camera flash." And so it goes. But if we're lucky, and if we're gifted, and if we're diligent, and if we're true - that flash can be brilliance. Just ask Colson Whitehead.

Note: This article was first published online in the now defunct Bully Magazine. Supplied with immense thanks to Ken Wohlrob.

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