And ghosts walk in the shadows of an obsolete scene

[sovay]

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, accompanying an article by John le Carré, is a black-and-white photograph of the author, taken "in Hamburg, in the early nineteen-sixties": I write, "a man in his early thirties with a face just a little too downpulled to be boyish, a trilby hat, a knit vest, and his hands in his pockets, glancing back from a lighted shop window into darkened rain-wet streets; he looks unglamorously like one of his own characters," but the image is not available online; what if he only looks like that to me? My mother wonders out loud if maybe now he looks like George Smiley, when everyone knows that George Smiley looks like Alec Guinness. Now I'm staring at the photograph until it grains, wondering what else I should mention—the sett-paved street, remarkably clean, the glassed-in posters too oblique to read, the car and the two or three blurred figures further up the block, dissolving into streetlight? Am I just confusing the issue? The more I describe, the more someone else will pick up this article and not recognize whatever I saw in it. The litter in the gutter is very little, some cigarettes and screwed-up paper. Now it sounds significant. I am writing a nonexistent city, in this novella I keep saying has eaten my brain, as though it is something consumptive, not creative; it is full of geographical details, which makes me notice how much I trust them in other writers. I take it on faith that there is a Charlton Street in Manhattan, a Deansgate in Manchester. Does the commuter rail run through Stoughton? Only a few weeks ago, I noticed the Elfland-and-Poughkeepsie in Kipling's "An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay." I start to wonder how many unreal or inaccurate or transposed place-names I could drop into conversation before anyone noticed. I didn't drive her to the station; she told me she could walk from Carnery, the five-way intersection where the lights are always slow to change, so I could pull over in front of the used record store and not get rear-ended by impatient audiophiles or the 58 bus turning mechanically off Goswell. The sunset lines right up with Commonwealth, twice a year.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There is certainly a Deansgate in Manchester. It's a very long, straight street. The cathedral is at one end and Manchester's very own, very new skyscaper at the other. Along the way are the offices of the Manchester Evening News, an upmarket department store called Kendalls, some very fine (converted) railway warehouses and the internationally important John Rylands Library.

[sovay]

There is certainly a Deansgate in Manchester.

Have you ever photographed it?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't. I have lots of pictures of my home city but few of them very good- and none of Deansgate. This is because they've been taken randomly- at odd times- without my mind being concentrated on it as a task. I've been thinking recently that I should correct this- and go to town- just me and my camera- and try and photograph it right.

[sovay]

I've been thinking recently that I should correct this- and go to town- just me and my camera- and try and photograph it right.

I would love to see the results.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your reflections on surreal geography remind me of an exercise seraphimsigrist undertook, inspired by this famous cover of the New Yorker. The exercise was to create your own, similar map. His looked like this.

It got me thinking, though, of a more surreal, warped map, that puts in the roads to other worlds and the otherworldly locales, that not only smooshes the distance from here to St. Petersburg, say, but draws golden lines between here and centers of power, that includes un-present harbors in empty, dangerous ocean inlets, and so on.

Does the sunset really line up with Commonwealth? Day in and day out, Route 2 can be treacherous driving east in the morning or west in the evening...

[sovay]

It got me thinking, though, of a more surreal, warped map, that puts in the roads to other worlds and the otherworldly locales, that not only smooshes the distance from here to St. Petersburg, say, but draws golden lines between here and centers of power, that includes un-present harbors in empty, dangerous ocean inlets, and so on.

I approve of that kind of map. It should be different every time you look at it.

I'm not drawing any maps for the city I'm writing. I don't think I should be. I keep finding out more of its layout simply because it happens to be there in the next sentence.

Does the sunset really line up with Commonwealth?

To the best of my knowledge, not at all. It runs east-west, but not as rigorously as the grid in Manhattan. But if I say it with conviction . . .

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome photograph of the sun between the towers.

Your city's unfolding as you write it.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link about Manhattanhenge. I'd never heard of that before.

I once had an assignment at college that involved looking at campus as a ritual landscape. It was sort of scary how well the interpretation worked.

But if I say it with conviction . . .

Folk might start believing in it. Perhaps, if you said it with sufficient conviction, it might even become true. Which is a little bit too Borgesian for comfort, I suppose.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Fascinating post. I'll have to look for that issue of The New Yorker, for the sake of the photograph.

I am writing a nonexistent city, in this novella I keep saying has eaten my brain, as though it is something consumptive, not creative; it is full of geographical details, which makes me notice how much I trust them in other writers.

Interesting. I'm writing a nonexistent town in a nonexistent state--am trying not to wrestle with the issue of whether Shawnee state is the result of different settlement patterns and drawing different lines on the geography of our Midwest or if it's somehow shoehorned in.

I start to wonder how many unreal or inaccurate or transposed place-names I could drop into conversation before anyone noticed.

It probably depends on whom you're speaking to, as well as where you're speaking of. Might be an interesting experiment, that.

My mother (who is blonde and, in Sweden, often has people asking her directions in Swedish--I have her features, but not her colouring) once proposed to get her hair put in braids, put on a dashiki, and go about telling folk she was from Africa. And when they would say "Aren't you sort of pale?" she proposed to say "Oh, I'm from north Africa." She suspected that a lot of them would nod and say "Oh, right. I've heard about that."

I suspect she's right about that.

[sovay]

And when they would say "Aren't you sort of pale?" she proposed to say "Oh, I'm from north Africa." She suspected that a lot of them would nod and say "Oh, right. I've heard about that."

Well, yeah. She could be Kabyle.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. She could be Kabyle.

True. Although I really don't think she looks very Kabyle...