intimate worldbuilding.
on visiting the NYC of my imagination in reality, Maeve Brennan, and reading to strangers in Brooklyn.
I went to New York City last weekend—neither Brad nor I had ever been before and I had enough airline miles to get us a free ticket, so we went. New York is a place that looms large in my imagination, perhaps in our collective American imagination, and I had several places I wanted to visit as I’d already visited them in my head. First, was Grand Central Station and the oyster bar therein, then the Strand, and the MET, and Broadway (we saw Chicago). We drank martinis and rushed through Times Square in the rain and had dinner at an izakaya in a basement in Midtown. It was all lovely. Although, when I told people I was from California, they almost always replied, “I’m sorry,” which does rub one the wrong way after a while.
The most unexpected part of our trip was being invited to read at my friend and pressmate Joey’s book release and accompanying rock show in Tom Fruin’s art studio in Brooklyn. I read from Foundations, my friends came, and the other people I met were so complimentary—I left that evening feeling very grateful and inspired!
On the trip, I took The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker by Maeve Brennan. I hadn’t read much from her before, but this collection paired well with my own mindset of observation.
Brennan is an Irish-born writer who contributed to the New Yorker under the pen name ‘The Long-Winded Lady’ primarily in the 1950s-60s. Her life is as fascinating as her art, and she wrote with an outsider’s gaze about a city so many people feel an affinity with. A self-proclaimed ‘traveler in residence,’ she hops from hotel to hotel providing witty observations on the clientele as she goes.
“All my life, I suppose, I’ll be running out of buildings just ahead of the wreckers.”
The path she cuts through the streets of New York City provides the foundation for her vignettes and observational essays. Brennan’s writing reminds me of Lauren Elkin’s book, Flâneuse, which I wrote about previously, and the transgressive nature of being a woman walking alone in a city, unaccompanied, drinking in bars, and unapologetically taking up space.
“Perhaps I felt free because it is autumn again. Even so, three o’clock in the afternoon is no hour for anybody to be sitting at a window in a public restaurant with a martini in front of her, or half a martini, as it was by the time the nuns passed, and it seemed miraculous to be able to be so free and independent that I could be in the restaurant I preferred and drink what I liked and eat what I liked and read the books of my choice and see two nuns pass and feel nothing except a slight surprise—no apprehensiveness, no wild survey of a panicky conscience, nothing like that.”
Existing in the world as a flâneuse is oftentimes unsafe, and Brennan explores that as well, the uncomfortable feeling of a man shouting at her in the street, the city itself in a state of continual flux that creates an illusion of safety. But her writing primarily paints pictures of the cozy corners in New York where she feels safe to watch those around her. She writes about the restaurants, cafes, and bookstores that will soon be sacrificed to ‘the God of Office Space,’ as well as the seedier parts of Broadway where she finds herself living. She focuses her attention on the mundane and commonplace occurrences that surround her everyday existence, approaching them with dry wit and crisp language. There is very little of the personal in these pages, Brennan is constantly looking outward, but I do think these pieces are some of the most beautiful observations of people I’ve ever read. Read this one on public transit and your vision will immediately sharpen.
I am in between books at the moment, in between many things if I am being honest, but I am hoping to dig into a few of the Man Booker International list novels soon! Does anyone have a favorite from this year’s list? I think I will start with Kairos because I already own it, then What I’d Rather not Think About.