by Fred Skolnik
In the pantheon of the Classic American Novel, An American Tragedy and U.S.A. had been novels about the essential division of America between those who have and those who have not. Dos Passos produced an energetic narrative that raced along without lingering to give its characters a human face while Dreiser dissected his protaganist’s inner world so clinically that it is impossible to see him as a living, breathing individual. Not so James T. Farrell. His alone of the three great social novels of the era brings to life a full-blooded human being capable of moving us.
Like U.S.A., Studs Lonigan is a trilogy whose individual volumes were first published separately: Young Lonigan in 1932, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan in 1934, and Judgment Day in 1935, and then the trilogy in one volume over 75 years ago in 1936. Full story »
Otavalo, Ecuador: Camera stolen in the early morning haze of travel, either on the bus or in the bus terminal, literally snatched from a bag I was carrying, that I never even set down beside me or had away from my view. Do I remember when it happened? No. Perhaps the girl behind me leaving the bus? Nothing out of the ordinary, not even a hint of being pressed against too closely. I had no idea it was gone until hours later, when I searched my bag frantically, and even then I held the unreal hope I had left my camera behind in the hotel.
And now gone are all the snapshots of rustic campesino life. The farewell shots with my host family and me, proud, work-weary, wholesome farmers and an itinerant gringa. Gone these images of dedicated mountainside farmers, the close-knit family and their American visitor. Gone these images of farmland and cows interspersed with Andean cloud forest, gone the picture with the cow who wandered right in the middle of the lush cloud forest. The waterfall, the luscious over-sized leaves, the overlapping shades of green, the idyllic, natural, dense beauty of this scene. The view of the village of Cuellaje taken from the mountainside, various shots of me on these mountain trails, with the splendor of the Andean background.
Gone are all the pictures of the goods the family had reaped: tomates del arbol, coffee beans, bushels of plant fiber, hanging banana branches, plantains, seeds left to dry out for planting, seedlings prepped for planting on their farm.
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So last Thursday I went, by myself, to the post office to buy some stamps. It’s early summer here in New York City. Which means our city weather is in a schizophrenic state, not knowing whether to refresh us with spring breeze or scald us with relentless sweat-stewed heat. On this special day it was the latter. This afternoon, it was as if a citywide furnace had farted unseen fire into faux imported Manhattan air. As always, I was in my standard June uniform: a white tee and khakis, accented with two-dollar flip-flops. Looking just like your average Indian American boy walking in the Big Apple. During the summer. Which as anyone of Indian descent might know, often feels like August in Calcutta.
Three blocks away from my destination, I saw two older, balding Black gentlemen strolling down the sidewalk.. Nothing special. They were both conventionally dressed, in polos and shorts. Walking past them, I now saw a group of white men and women, maybe four in total. Oh. Damn it all to hell in a hand basket. Wouldn’t you know, these folks looked like they just left the set of Friends. The same show that gloriously depicted an all-white, melanin-free New York City. Twenty-something, upper-middle-class privileged nightmares who probably just graduated from Boston University and were now living it up in the big city. With their yuppie crapola, and with their wannabe-hip hairstyles and with their irritating young-professional attire and with their John Mayer music in their ipod’s. I didn’t understand why they weren’t at their 9-5 jobs. Lunch breaks, I guessed. Full story »
