New York Stories

Manhattan Transfers is not only about New York but it also seeps with the feel of New York. It is disconnected and at the same time uniting all the characters and stories with the feel of discontent and wanting – all integral parts of New York. It is a place that harbors millions of dreams, hopes, goals, which is what drives this city but also creates the misery Manhattan Transfers is filled with.  It is not a story about anyone character, it is a tale of a city and every element of the novel builds up a real place, New York, which overwhelms the reader with its feel, people, places,  and emotions.

For example, one nuisance of the novel that presents the real New York so well is the way the author uses language – misspells the words, exactly as a person would pronounce them – to represent the ethnic and socio-economic diversity so characteristic of New York. Although it may add to the confusion created by the nonlinear technique it adds to the honesty of this story about a city. It resembles reality and pulls the reader deeper into this reality, and then it subtly hides the fact that this is a fictional novel.

To add to that, art is supposed to reveal something about the human condition to its consumer, whether it is hopeful, cynical, pessimistic is irrelevant. And the only way to accomplish this task is to do so in a nonlinear fashion. Because life is not linear, and most will attest that no matter how much and how well one plans, it never happens exactly according to expectations. This, in turn, is what makes life what it is (a wonderful thing) – unpredictable and unstable collection of lucky mishaps and heartbreaking events. A string of fragmented episodes or experiences is life and Manhattan Transfers enables the reader to feel as if one is living in New York in the beginning of 1900’s.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vBmKXTpu_Ns" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

This is a clip from the film, The Red Velvet Swing”  (1955).  It recreates the moment when the Harry K. Shaw (a jealous husband)  murders New York architect Stanford White in 1906.  White had an affair with the model and showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, who was Shaw’s wife.  The sensational murder trials that followed were referred to as “The Trial of the Century” in the Hearst newspaper, The New York Journal.  Manhattan Transfer refers to this moment in the opening section, “Nine Days’ Wonder.”  White, the designer of the Washington Square Arch, the New York Public Library and the American Academy in Rome, among others, famously kept a red velvet swing in his loft apartment.  He invited women (in various stages of undress) to ride it.  In the novel, Phil Sandbourne declares, “A man’s moral’s aren’t anybody’s business.  It’s his work that counts”  (167).  How do you think this detail and Sandbourne’s declaration informs your understanding of New York in Dos Passos’s novel?