A horse a horse

This Sunday I will realize a long-held dream: to walk the entire length of Broadway on Manhattan Island. I got the idea about 15 years ago after reading a terrific article on Broadway in National Geographic. Others have walked Manhattan, going North-to-South or South-to-North on a variety of routes, but I like the idea of using Broadway as an organizing principle. This majestic thoroughfare–running all the way to Albany, it is supposedly the longest street in the world at 150 miles–has been a backyard for me since I was a little kid. My dad used to have a store on Broadway and 42nd (a site currently occupied by the chunky-prissy Conde Nast building) in the 80s and early 90s, and my sibs and I would spend our vacations there, helping make fake IDs for tourists and teens, buying six-packs of tallboys (for Dad) at the deli around the corner, and running errands all over the city. Great memories. Broadway was our lighthouse, our magnetic north, our home base and launching pad. North to Central Park to clamber over the bedrock in the playground. West to the Hudson River and trade shows in the glassy expanse of the Javits Convention Center. South to Macy’s and its magical toy department. East to Bryant Park, dirty, drug-infested Bryant Park. At one time or another, I’ve been on every part of Broadway from where it terminates at Bowling Green to 122nd Street in Morningside Heights. Everything north of 122nd is new territory to me (a couple of trips to Yankee Stadium don’t really count). It’s a dangerous land, a gentrified land, full of crumbling retaining walls and insanely charismatic politicians. Have no fear, dear readers, my friend Paul, geography stud and fellow cinephile, will join me for this journey. "Give my regards to Broadway…"

Usually, I can’t stand short stories, with their writerly dips and feints and gotcha endings. To me, they’re the literary one-night stand. Dinner, dancing, coffee, cabfare. The dramatic situations feel forced, self-conscious, and not a little desperate, like a stand-up comic pushing out out a few last clunkers before getting the hook. Always in the back of my mind, I picture the smug, goateed author "workshopping" the latest ditty with his class of beaming sycophants at State U. Ho ho. They’ll never see THAT coming! Clearly, I have some issues with the genre. But sweet resolution may be on the way in the form of a certain T.C. Boyle.

T.C. Boyle (formerly T. Coraghessan Boyle — mail me a dollar and I’ll tell you how to pronounce Coraghessan) has my undivided attention. I received After the Plague, a 2001 collection of short stories, as a Christmas gift, and I’ve been inwardly smiling ever since. Boyle’s stories don’t unfold, they detonate, bomblets of pleasure and pain and humanity. His imagination roams from sleepy Anchorage, Alaska, to California at the end of civilization, to the claustrophic confines of a a malfunctioning airliner. The characters are deeply, lovingly flawed and more often than not, things do not go well for them. But when they win, their victories are our victories, won in the spaces and scope of our lives: dorm rooms, bars, and backyards. Boyle tends to upshift to drinking, sex, and murder; his is a male gaze, but not overpoweringly so. A central thread running through this collection is need as the primary driver for most individuals. To be human is to know that you need, to know what you need, and to act on your need (and not get caught).

Recently Read
It’s nice to be back in the blogosphere. Why so long between posts? That’s technically classified, but I’ll give the true fans a hint: Sloppy Joe injury. Post a comment, boyos (Clay, you are exempt), and I’ll dance like an electrified monkey. Recent reads:

The Areas of My Experise by John Hodgman
The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre
The Waterworks, World’s Fair, and The March by E.L. Doctorow
Wicked by Gregory McGuire
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
The Windup Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami