ENG 2150: Writing Through New York

Today I did my presentation on Satanstoe by James Fenimore Cooper.  This is a story about Manhattan in the 17^th century when the Dutch had just settled. Throughout the story cooper is talking about the slaves and the African American holiday pinkster. He is always stating how the Dutch are more humane to their slaves then the southerners. The reason why I choose this piece was because the introduction sparked my interest, it gives a brief biography about cooper and his ties to NewYork, saying that he lives there for some time and eventually started to hate it and believed it represented everything wrong with America. I found this very interesting, especially since as I read further it seemed he always found himself better or holier than thou. He criticized the south for their treatment of the African slaves, and then turned around and talked about having slaves given to children for them to be “married” to.

I choose to read quotes from this passage and try to make it very clear how hypocritical cooper sounded, and his attitude of being better than everyone, making his statement about new York not surprising, and also not a creditable source.

I decided to do my presentation on “Drowned Their Sins” by Abraham Cahan located on page 320. My reason for choosing this piece was similar to another classmate’s. I was just reading through the table of contents and I decided to pick the one that caught my eye. Unfortunately this took a few tries before it finally worked because the first few pieces I found were not nearly as interesting as their titles.

Basically I will sort of act out a specific part of the story. I will be acting as the intelligent jewish man who was criticizing the women for taking a verse out of their bible Literally.

(Due to a minor injury I endured at work this morning I was able to make it to class so I decided to record my presentation and attempt to post it to the blog. If that doesn’t work out then I will just bring the recording to class with me on Thursday.)

My presentation is on Sara Teasdale’s poem called Union square. Beginning off, I just want to a say a little biography about Sara Teasdale that I found very interesting.   She wrote a quite number of poems that were based in New York locations place such as Riverside Park, Union Square, and 42^nd street. As a young girl, Teasdale and caught diseases easily. For most of her life, she had a nurse who took care of her. Because she was so sickly, she was homeschooled until she was nine. She never had communication with her peers. As a result, she was forced to entertain herself with stories and things that she made up in her own world. When Teasdale was ten, she had the first communication with her peers at school. When she was fourteen she began to put the thoughts and dreams that amused her and wrote that on paper and that is when she wrote her first poem.

She was never able to experience in life the passion that she expressed in her poetry. She was not happy in her marriage, and she divorced Filsinger in 1929 even though he didn’t want to. But in 1933, Teasdale caught chronic pneumonia and it weakened her not only in body but also in mind and spirit. No longer able to see the beauty in simple things, Teasdale committed suicide at age 48. The reason I wanted to notify you guys of her biography because her poems are based on her life. It shows how even though she was isolated, she had such great poems. How can an isolated girl write such great poems about New York? It goes to show you how writing is a way that writers express fantasies or ideas they cannot resemble in real life. Since, she got sick and it affected her mind, she was not able to see the beauty in the world, so she committed suicide. It depicts the idea of how much writing about New York meant to her and what is the point of writing if you cannot fully see New York as it is.

The poem I picked was Union Square by Sara Teasdale mostly because I believe it resonates with her and the reason she wrote this poem because she felt that she could not attract a man’s love. She uses the verses“With the man I love who loves me not,” “I leaned to catch the words…. “The words my heart was calling,” (Teasdale, 408).  It shows how she wants to tell her lover she likes him but she cannot. Then she shows a depiction of her jealous of girls who are brave enough to flaunt to guys their sexuality without caring about the consequences, when she states, “But oh, the girls who can ask for love in the lights of Union Square. We often see guys as aggressive in this society but she was jealous of the girls who would take the first step. This was the first time she wrote this poem directly from her voice. This was the first act of boldness in writing in 1911. In today’s society, do you think women’s roles have changed as in, are they more open to going up to a guy first?

My partner and I (Everard Best) are doing our presentation on an excerpt from Frances Trollope’s piece Domestic Manners of the Americans. We’re going to record ourselves talking about the piece using modern English, that way people can understand use easier.

In short, Trollope expresses her admiration for New York City and describes it very well. She talks about the pier, the river, the actual shape of Manhattan island and the lifestyles of the people who live in the city. She also likes making comparisons between the city and European cities, especially London. Although she talks wonders about the city, in the final paragraph she talks about her disdain with the uniformity of the houses, their interior design and nature of the dinner parties that take place within.

Natalie and I chose to do our presentation on one of the poems by Sara Teasdale, titled “Coney Island”, on page 408. Since I live in Brooklyn, near Coney Island, and Nat’s parents are Brooklynites, we’re both familiar with the area and so this poem caught our eye.

For our presentation we created a little skit about two girls coming to the beach, one reluctantly. We use quotes from the poem as one girl questions the reason for her friend bringing her to the freezing beach in the middle of winter. We show differing views of the beach- We both love it, however one of us prefers it in the summer while the other likes the solitude and quiet that comes with the winter. We use modern language to truly portray how two teenagers would argue over something like this, yet we mange to capture the meaning of the poem. Just because one of wants to enjoy the beach in the winter, the weather won’t simply cater to our needs and be warm and “beach-weather”. In the end, the two forget the idea and leave the beach, saving it for a warmer day.

I decided to do my presentation on Junky, by William S. Burroughs because the excerpt reminded me of a friend who is in a similar state. In this passage of Junky, Burroughs describes 103rd and Broadway, where drug dealers and drug use is common. In the beginning, he describes the neighbor; how it is filled with “junkies” and how drugs are everywhere.
Burroughs then focuses of a specific group of people, the 103rd Street boys; George the Greek, Pantopon Rose, Louis the Bellhop, Eric the Fag, the Beagle, the Sailor, and Joe the Mex. Their stories were all similar in that their addiction to drugs caused the downfall in their lives.
Earlier I mentioned that this reminded me of a friend.
Here is a video about him.

I wrote a poem for my dear friend.
Oh Towelie
Why oh why did you have to start doing drugs,
It destroys the body, it destroys the mind.
For God’s sake, you had to give oral to an old guy just to get by
But I’m happy that you’ve gone through rehab,
That you’re back with your girlfriend, Rebecca,
I just hope it’s not Friday.

I chose “Impostors” by James D. McCabe for this presentation reading. As I was going through the table of contents, the title caught my eye. It also reminded me of the first paper I wrote for this class. “Attention seeking New Yorkers,” clicked with the title of impostors in my mind as I was reading through it. And as I read on, more movies and thoughts that related back to this story was hovering over my head.

The theme and mindset of people wanting to succeed in New York specifically never seems to leave this book. People are always coming up with new ideas to succeed, whether it means to be famous, rich or just happy. In the story, Lord X imposes of being an England Lord with a lot of money in his inheritance. He is tailed by many women in 5th Ave. When they found about his marriage with a belle they were all disappointed and envied the bride. While women were falling head over heels for Lord X, the men didn’t seem to care and even believed it was fake. A few days later, the newspaper carried a story saying Lord X was not true, that there was no such name in the legacy in England. However the bride didn’t want to break up the marriage and father agreed to let him stay in his wealthy being but while laughing at him.

The second story is about a woman in her thirties who attempted to get a real estate property free of charge. She went from door to door for free shelter stating that she had a lot of money coming in but it’s taking some times. The hosts believe her story letting her stay. She promises to pay them back and leaves. She borrows money from the next host repaying the previous host and etc. Then she finally comes across a real estate property. She manages to convince a man to buy it for her in her name, but the realtor and the owner denies this and she runs away to another place. The information the business partners had of her was carried on the newspaper locating her, which led to suicide of the thirty year old woman.

The story also mentions homeless people not actually being homeless. They put on an act for money and food. In NYC we see a lot of “hobos” and it’s really hard to distinguish between the real homeless and the frauds. Either way, I don’t know if I should hand them a dollar bill because “they’re going to use it on drugs and alcohol.” But who knows?

Over all, people shouldn’t waste their time trying to someone they’re not. It might be cliche but we were all created differently, so why try to blend in, rather than standing out? Being yourself is what presents the best. Trying to be someone else might not last your whole life. Someone is ought to find out. And trying to keep this secret might be the hardest thing to do. Telling yourself to not be yourself.

New York City is no mere City. Every decade and every century the City sees millions of people who awe its majesty. In the present scheme of society New York is considered to be “the freest of American cities”, where everybody enjoys equal rights without any discrimination. Unfortunately this was not so for everyone during the 1930s. For my presentation I chose a narrative titled “New York, 1936” which was written by Ralph Ellison. To be precise this work actually is a small part of the famous essay “An extravagance of laughter”. Ellison was an African – American migrant from the South. He chose New York City because it was “dreamlike” he thought of it as the “freest of American cities and considered Harlem as the site and symbol of Afro-American progress and hope”. He chose to come to New York as a means to escape from the problems in the South “summer free of the South” and to find some sort of employment, at least temporarily that would help him finance his studies as a music major. During his visit to New York far from his state of Alabama he still felt restrained by what his culture had taught him as normal or abnormal in “public conduct”.

It is well known, that the 1930’s was a period of dreadful segregation of African-Americans. The South was a center of segregation due to slavery issues from earlier years. Yet, in the North “social freedom” appeared to be more visible than in the South. This period of time was very important in American history and in particular in New York City. This marked, in fact, the period of Great Migration and establishment of Harlem Renaissance “as a site and symbol of Afro-American progress and hope”. Many African-Americans living in other parts of the country then headed for New York City in order to look for this “social freedom” which was nonexistent in the South. This is what motivated Ellison to visit the city.

The author describes his experiences riding in the subways and buses. He describes one instance in which a white woman and a black man race with each other for the only empty seat on a train. In his words, “the contest was between a huge white woman and a small Negro man. The two had come out charging through the opening doors like racehorses racing towards the only available seat on the train”. Ellison had never seen anything like this before because in the South, where he came from, this was unheard of. No black man would try to compete with a white man or woman for anything. After the race that produced a startling end the African-American man landed on the white woman’s lap “nose-tip to nose”.

The type of description here is very symbolical, but it is clear that behind this description there was a bigger issue, the competition between two main races. The long war between the races, where whites fought for supremacy and blacks fought for at least the right to be free. Even though the society in the North was considered to be desegregated people still felt tension between whites and blacks. In this case the white woman on the train won the seat with “the most ladylike and triumphant of smiles” and the African-American man screamed, “You can have it, I do not want it!” With this example we can feel the tension between the races. Whites considered themselves as a dominant race. The whites from that time were unfortunately stuck with the fact that they had held themselves to a stand of superiority to which they could not and never would achieve.

The author eventually realizes that to enjoy New York and not be treated any differently one had to act like a New Yorker. In the words of Ellison “If you approached with uncertain mien you were likely to be turned away by anyone from doormen to waiters to ticket agent. However, if you acted as though you were in fact a New Yorker exercising a routine freedom, chances were that you would be accepted”. He came to understand that “one was accepted on the basis of what one appeared to be”. To this end Ellison adopted to use a mask which he conceived to be that of a “New Yorker”. To use this mask he had to forget about the culture that he had grown up in the South and simply live in the city the way everyone else did.