Skip to main content

★★★★☆ New York City suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder

The City We Became

NK Jemisin

I have a problem that will make it difficult for me to appreciate The City We Became. I have never been able to see a city as a thing. I lived in Dallas, Texas, for 21 years. I remember the schools I studied at, Brookhaven Community College and Southern Methodist University. I remember the school I taught at, UT Southwestern Medical Center. I remember the hospital area of Dallas, Harry Hines Boulevard and the businesses and institutions along it. I remember the functionally nonexistent public transport. I remember the highways -- I-635 circling the city, east-west roads I-30 and 114 and north-south roads 75 and the Tollway crossing to form the crosshair whose bullseye was Downtown Dallas, and I-35 striking out diagonally toward Denton and Houston. I remember the velocitous terror of driving through the Mixmaster at 60 mph, hoping not to be flung off in some random direction. I remember timing my trip home in the evening so as to see the reflection of the sunset from the prismatic skyscrapers of Downtown. I remember the Arts District and the Symphony screaming, "See? We are TOO sophisticated and artistic!" I remember the gay bars of the Oak Lawn district (never been inside one, but even from the outside they were something!), and the complaints from folks who spent an evening partying in Deep Ellum.

What makes no sense to me, however, is to throw all these things into a bag together and call it "Dallas". Partly, of course, that is because I sense how much is missing -- how much of Dallas I (or any one person) did not appreciate because of who I am and what I do. But it's more that those are separate things -- they don't combine into an identity. If you asked me to compare New York to Dallas, I would scarcely know how to start. It's like being asked to compare the Atlantic Ocean to Shakespeare's Hamlet -- it just doesn't make any sense to me.

**N.K. Jemisin has entered the chat **

NKJ: Hey there, L. I'm not a *bleep*ing idiot. I'm 'way ahead of you. Your objection is basically the whole premise of the book. As the publisher's blurb says, "Every great city has a soul... She's got six." Besides -- Dallas -- Pfft. Doesn't have a soul and never will.

L: Yeah, OK. I admit you did in some degree anticipate my point, even though you dumbed it down. I don't buy that the Bronx, for instance, is a single thing.

NKJ: I have a story to tell. There's not space for every *bleep*ing last real-world detail.

L: Fair enough.

(In case it is not clear to anyone, this dialog is 100% fictional.)

A book like this inevitably lives or dies by its portrayal of The City. I am ill-equipped to judge Jemisin's New York, for reasons already described. I wish now I could ask my Aunt Althea's opinion. Aunt Althea was a nurse in Europe in World War II. She came home to the USA, where she worked at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on Manhattan for many years. Besides saving lives, she read and read and read. If she were still available for consultation I would ask her, "Have you read The City We Became? [A mere formality -- of course she'd have read it.] What did you think?" In a way, though, she pre-answered the question. She gave us Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, another novel that personifies the soul of New York.


Our world is desperately cruel and beautiful. Consequently, so too are its cities. It is inevitable in novels such as City We Became and Winter's Tale that the cruelty of The City becomes evident. Helprin's New York differs from Jemisin in making beauty and joy more prominent. Helprin's portrayal is also more explicitly historical, and also more white. City We Became shows a side of New York that is difficult to discern in Winter's Tale.

I think Aunt Althea would have liked it.

Amazon review

Goodreads review
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

★★★☆☆ The Great Geometer

The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius Patchen Barss If I were asked to name the greatest physicists of the second half of the twentieth century, I would probably choose three:  Richard Feynman ,  Steven Weinberg , and  Roger Penrose . (I am a neuroscientist and a mathematician with a long interest in physics. I'm not the best person to choose great physicists, but I'm not the worst.) Thus when my local Theoretical Physics Institute (every town should have one!), the  Perimeter Institute , announced a public presentation by  Patchen Barss , a science journalist who has written this biography of  Penrose , I immediately snagged a ticket. Barss  wounded my confidence by emitting that cliché of the science popularizer: that you make science interesting by telling the "human story." Oh, please! I don't read a biography of  Penrose  for the sake of the human story. Why do science popularizers find it so hard to believe that there...

★★★★☆ What are these people?

Red Side Story Jasper Fforde When I reviewed   Shades of Grey , the first novel in  Jasper Fforde 's  Shades of Grey  series, I asked Although I referred to Eddie as a young man, it is not clear to me what the people of the Collective are. I think they are more-or-less human. ... However, in some ways they behave like automata. These are puzzles that I hope Jasper Fforde will clear up in subsequent novels in the Shades of Grey series. Now I'm patting myself on the back, because that is indeed what  Red Side Story  is about. Or so say I. You might think it is about other things -- a love story, a fight to survive, a battle for justice, a cycle race -- and you would not be wrong.  Red Side Story  contains multitudes. Shades of Grey  ended in a flurry of revelations about the Collective. Eddie, Jane and Courtland Gamboge visited the abandoned town of High Saffron, where Jane revealed that all the people supposedly sent to Reboot were in fact sen...

★★★★☆ The Duchess, the Prince, and the Preacher

The Apocalypse Codex Charles Stross Bob Howard, we have been told several times in the previous three  Laundry Files  novels, is being groomed for rapid advancement in the Laundry. In this episode he is given a "training wheels" assignment by Gerald Lockhart, a senior manager in the Department of External Assets, a division of the Laundry of which Bob understands little, and most of that wrong. He is asked to supervise two of the external assets Gerry's division manages: the sorceress Persephone Hazard (codename BASHFUL INCIENDARY) and her muscle Johnny McTavish (codename JOHNNY PRINCE) as they investigate Raymond Schiller, the pastor of an American megachurch called the Golden Promise Ministries, which has begun fishing for converts in the Prime Minister's cabinet, making him a person of interest to UK intelligence agencies. Bob is to tag along and supervise (in the lightest possible way, since they know what they're doing and he does not) the operation. Well, as...

★★★★☆ Ultimately, I found I didn't believe it

The Wire David Simon Yesterday I watched the last episode of Season 5 of  The Wire . Well, it was good. Obviously, it was good. It has won all kinds of awards, and everyone on Earth will tell you how great it is.  What I mean specifically is that it's good entertainment . The plots are intricate and engaging, and the characters are charismatic and well drawn. But I find myself reluctant to confer on it the mantle of greatness that almost everyone else does. Here's how I felt after watching the last episode. Many threads were brought to satisfying ends. We end up with a lot of vivid characters: the corrupt politician, the pushers, the international drug traffickers, the dope fiend, and murder police, murder police, murder police. And you know what? I didn't believe in any of them. They were all obviously fictional constructs. Well, I hear you saying, what did you expect? They are fiction. You knew that going in. But the best fiction transcends itself. You don't strain t...

★★★★☆ Enola is looking for a friend

The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan Nancy Springer I just finished three weighty novels. If you care, and there is no reason I know that you should, they were  City of Miracles ,  The Running Grave , and  Starling House , good novels all, but no light fare. Therefore, I told myself wisely, "Self! What you want now is something light and sweet and crunchy! You want an  Enola Holmes  novel!" Thus I gobbled down Book 4,  The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan . It was just the thing!  Pink Fan  is the best  Enola Holmes  book so far, in my opinion. Enola is not OK. Despite her mother's frequently repeated mantra, "You will do very well on your own", Enola is not doing great on her own. Abandoned at the age of fourteen by her mother, hunted by her formidable brothers Sherlock and Mycroft, who want to take her freedom away, and without friends, Enola longs for affection. To be sure, plenty remains of the funds her mother embezzled from Mycroft and l...

★★★★☆ Fantasy of a corrupt golden age

The Familiar Leigh Bardugo The publisher describes  Leigh Bardugo 's  The Familiar  as a "historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age". That description is accurate, but gives a misleading idea of the book.  The Spanish Golden Age  or Siglo de Oro is a name given to the period from 1492 - 1659, during which Spanish art, culture, and political power flourished. It was also the height of persecution of anyone suspected of heresy or Jewish ancestry. "Golden" is not the adjective that will come to mind as you read. The main point-of-view character is Luzia Cotado, a scullion in the household of Valentina and Marius Ordoño. Luzia is the orphan child or parents who were secretly Jewish. From her Jewish ancestors she inherits the ability to make "milagritos". ("Milagrito" is a diminutive of "milagro" -- miracle, thus "milagrito" is "little miracle". There is a lot of Spanish in  The Familiar . You don't nee...

★★★★★ A Cyberspace Cowboy

Count Zero William Gibson Count Zero  was the first book in  William Gibson 's  Cyberspace  trilogy I read. I picked it up in an airport bookstore, where it was on display, so it was probably pretty newly published -- let's say 1984. The Internet existed -- I had been using it to send email, although that was still pretty difficult and took some figgerin. It would be another ten years before  Tim Berners-Lee 's World-Wide Web got off the ground as a thing that any academic could use, and thus a version of  Gibson 's cyberspace became real. There were no eBooks back them (not really), which meant that a person like me, who must ALWAYS have a book to read, had to carry a backpack full of heavy paper books when I traveled. A quick glance in the bookstore made it clear that  Count Zero  was my kind of book. And it was. As it happens, the series works almost equally well in the order  Count Zero ,  Neuromancer ,  Mona Lisa Overdrive ...

★★★☆☆ Commentary disguised as a novel

The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood I think I read  The Handmaid’s Tale  around 1986, when it first came out and became famous. I found it tedious. I have since looked at one or two other works by  Margaret Atwood , and honestly, I have never enjoyed one. You have probably spotted my problem. It is that verb "enjoy". I read books for enjoyment. Not only enjoyment, but also enlightenment and information, and to broaden my mind. But I also enjoy those things, so the verb "enjoy" should not be taken to imply that I will only read a book that is a ball of fun fluff. (Indeed, if you care to peruse the list of books I have recently reviewed, you'll see a five-star review for  Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering . Let me just state, for the record, that  The Handmaid’s Tale  is less entertaining than  Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos . To me! Of course I speak only for myself.) But  The Handmaid’s T...

★★★☆☆ Introducing Rincewind and Twoflower and The Luggage

The Color of Magic Terry Pratchett I have an ambiguous relationship with  Terry Pratchett  and the  Discworld . On the one hand, I have enjoyed everything I've ever read by  Pratchett , some more than others. On the other hand,  Pratchett  is so relentlessly and extravagantly hyped by his supporters that it always put my back up. ( Pratchett  himself is innocent of the hype, claiming that "his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.") The  Discworld  is equally daunting in a different way. It consists (according to Amazon) of 41 books. I didn't want to commit to a 41-book series.  Pratchett , no fool, understands the reluctance of readers to embark on such a journey, and claims that "The Discworld novels can be read in any order." I will not say that he's lying, because it is certainly physically POSSIBLE to read the series in any order, but he is definitely indulging in some heavy-grade misdirection. I know because I tr...

★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up Dave Barry There is one living human who can write prose that makes me laugh so hard I can't breathe. That person is Tactical Assault Clown  Dave Barry .  Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up  had that effect on me at least twice -- an automatic five-star rating. ("Tactical Assault Clown" is right up there with "Combat Epistemologist" ( The Jennifer Morgue ) on my list of creative military specializations. And if you're one of those people who get their knickers all in a twist when someone uses parens inside of parens, you know what you can do about it.) (Yes, I know I'm not funny.) It's not all ROFL funny. In fact, he tells about his father's alcoholism ( that story has a happy ending ) and his mother's suicide ( that one obviously does not ). Later in the book he tries to convince us that his real li...