lateronLesson 6 Loving and Hating New York

2021年1月21日发(作者：马西斯)
Lesson 6 Loving and Hating New York
Lesson 6 Loving and Hating New York


Thomas Griffith
1 Those ad campaigns celebrating the Big Apple, those T-
shirts with a heart design proclaiming ―I love
New York,‖ are signs, pathetic in their desperation, of how the mighty has fallen. New York City
used to
leave the bragging
to
others, for bragging was ―bush‖ Being unique, the biggest and the best, New York
didn’t have to assert how special it was.



2 It isn’t the top anymore, at least if the top is measured by who begets the styles and sets the tre
nds.
Nowadays New York is out of phase with American taste as often as it is out of step with American politics.
Once it was the nation’s undisputed fashion authority, but it too long resisted the incoming casual style and
lost its monopoly. No longer so looked up to or copied, New York even prides itself on being a holdout from
prevailing American trends, a place to escape Common Denominator Land.


3 Its deficiencies as a pacesetter are more and more evident. A dozen other cities have buildings more
inspired
architecturally
than
any
built
in
New
York
City
in
the
past
twenty
years.
The
giant
Manhattan
television studios
where Toscanini’s NBC Symphony once played now sit empty most of the time, while
sitcoms
cloned
and
canned
in
Hollywood,
and
the
Johnny
Carson
show
live,
preempt
the
airways
from
California. Tin Pan Alley has moved to Nashville and Hollywood. Vegas casinos routinely pay heavy sums
to
singers
and
entertainers
whom
no
nightspot
in
Manhattan
can
afford
to
hire.
In
sports,
the
bigger
superdomes, the more exciting teams, the most enthusiastic fans, are often found elsewhere.


4 New York was never a good convention city
–
being regarded as unfriendly, unsafe, overcrowded,
and expensive
–
but it is making something of a comeback as a tourist attraction. Even so, most Americans
would probably rate New Orleans, San Francisco, Washington, or Disneyland higher. A dozen other cities,
including my hometown of Seattle, are widely considered better cities to live in.


5 Why, then, do many Europeans call New York their favorite city? They take more readily than do
most Americans to its cosmopolitan complexities, its surviving, aloof, European standards, its alien mixtures.
Perhaps some of these Europeans are reassured by the sight, on the twin fashion avenues of Madison and
Fifth, of all those familiar international names
–
the jewelers, shoe stores, and designer shops that exist to
flatter
and
bilk
the
frivolous
rich.
But
no;
what
most
excites
Europeans
is
the
city’s
charged
,
nervous
atmosphere, its vulgar dynamism .


6 New York is about energy, contention, and striving. And since it contains its share of articulate losers,
it is also about mockery, the put-
down , the loser’s shrug (―whaddya gonna do?‖). It is about constant battles
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Lesson 6 Loving and Hating New York
for subway seats,
for a
c
abdriver’s
or
a
clerk’s
or a waiter’s
attention, for a foothold
, a
chance, a better
address, a larger billing. To win in New York is to be uneasy; to lose is to live in jostling proximity to the
frustrated majority.


7 New York was never Mecca to me. And
though I have lived there more than half my life, you won’t
find me wearing an ―I Love New York‖ T
-
shirt. But all in all, I can’, t think of many places in the world I’d
rather li, ve. It’, s not easy to define why.



8 Nature’s pleasures are much qualifi
ed in N, ew York, . You never see a star-
filled sky; the city’s bright
glow arrogantly obscures the heavens. Sunsets can be spectacular: oranges and reds tinting the sky over the
Jersey
meadows
and
gaudily
reflected
in
a
thousand
windows
on
Manhattan’s
jag
ged
skyline.
Nature
constantly
yields
to
man
in
New
York:
witness
those
fragile
sidewalk
trees
gamely
struggling
against
encroaching cement and petrol fumes. Central Park, which Frederick Law Olmsted designed as lungs for the
city’s
poor,
is
in
places
gras
sless
and
filled
with
trash,
no
longer
pristine
yet
lively
with
the
noise
and
vivacity
of
people,
largely
youths,
blacks,
and
Puerto
Ricans,
enjoying
themselves.
On
park
benches
sit
older people, mostly white, looking displaced. It has become less a tranquil park than an untidy carnival.


9 Not the glamour of the city, which never beckoned to me from a distance, but its opportunity
–
to
practice the kind of journalism I wanted
–

drew me to New York. I wasn’t even sure how I’d measure up
against
others
who
had
been
more
soundly
educated
at
Ivy
League
schools,
or
whether
I
could
compete
against that tough local breed, those intellectual sons of immigrants, so highly motivated and single-minded,
such as Alfred Kazin, who for diversion (for heaven’t sake!) played Bach’s Unaccompanied Partitas on the
violin.


10 A testing of oneself, a fear of giving in to the most banal and marketable of one’s talents, still draws
many of the young to New York. That and, as always, the company of others fleeing something constricting
where they came from. Together these young share a freedom, a community of inexpensive amusements, a
casual living, and some rough times. It can’t be the living conditions that appeal, for only fond memory will
forgive the inconvenience, risk, and squalor. Commercial Broadway may be inaccessible to them, but there
is
off-
Broadway,
and
then
off-off-
Broadway.
If
painters
disdain
Madison
Avenue’s
plush
art
galleries,
Madison
Avenue
dealers
set
up
shop
in
the
grubby
precincts
of
Soho.
But
the
purity
of
a
bohemian
dedication
can
be
exaggerated.
The
artistic
young
inhabit
the
same
Greenwich
Village
and
its
fringes
in
which the experimentalists in the arts lived during the Depression, united by a world against them. But the
present generation is enough of a subculture to be a source of profitable boutiques and coffeehouses. And it
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