Literary subway appreciations
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The litblog The Millions recalls the 1998 book ‘Underground: Travels on the Global Metro’ by photographer Marco Pesaresi, who visited Berlin, Calcutta, London, Madrid, Milan, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, Paris and Tokyo:
His camera sometimes conspires with the passenger,’ they write -- causing a pose, an attitude (Mexico City). Sometimes, it is seemingly invisible (Milan) capturing but not appearing to intrude on a pre-existing mood (Tokyo).
Who knew Calcutta had a subway system? Well, that’s what people say about Los Angeles, and we do -- it’s pictured in the photo above. Anyway ... the occasion for the subway appreciation was a travel piece in Canada’s Globe and Mail on the world’s subways. Author Mark Kingwell -- a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto and author of 12 books -- knows, and loves, all subway systems. And he knows L.A. has a subway:
Los Angeles, a place where people are ashamed to admit that they use the subway, actually has a nice one, with carpeted trains, Frank Gehry architecture and handsome bums who look like — maybe are — out-of-work actors. ... You can fall in love in the subway. You can read a book ostentatiously, telling people you are a Jane Austen kind of guy or a Jonathan Lethem kind of girl. You can hang from the bars and pretend you are a monkey. You can smell people’s feet, hear their dumb ideas, see them eat and sometimes vomit. This is democratic social space, my friends, with all the anxieties and possibilities that such space implies.
He cites notable literary treatments of subways, including ‘V.’ by Thomas Pynchon, Jonathan Lethem’s essay on the Hoyt Schermerhorn station in ‘The Disappointment Artist’ and ‘Girls Fall Down’ by Maggie Helwig, which he describes as being ‘about bioterrorist plots in Toronto’s subway.’ He even quotes birthday boy T.S. Eliot:
[W]hen an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silenceAnd you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepenLeaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about.
If I were making a pile of subway books, I’d add Jennifer Toth’s memorable (if contested) nonfiction tale ‘The Mole People,’ about people living in abandoned subway tunnels under New York City. What’s your favorite tale from the underground?
--Carolyn Kellogg
Photo credit: Carolyn Kellogg
