This text originally appeared in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 13th October 2012. The critic was Jonas Thente.
The police and the bad guys. Explosive history novel about New York
Every time I've been to New York there has been a debate about the NYPD. The first time it was related to the riots in Tompkins Square Park. Or rather: the police forced the less armed locals out of the park that lay next to the realtors' development areas for the fashionable, nouveau-riche middle class.
Last time it had something to do with a send-off of a retired chief of police, resulting in the newspapers publishing photos of policemen clad in only their uniform caps harrassing citizens in various ways.
New York Police Department. Even if the force has yet to reach the same level of bad guy status as its Los Angeles colleagues, the distrust between the citizens and the police force is both mutual and deep-rooted in New York.
It's a distrust that has been present since 1844 and is now even more alive in spite of all the crime shows and films, the heroism during 9/11 and tearful Irish songs to a deceased colleague.
A Marxist analyst has pointed out that the divide is class related, which is correct. "New York's finest" were originally recruited to a large extent from the masses of Irish immigrants, who had the choice between this and other less sanctioned incomes.
An author could have written a novel about how it all started, because it is a fascinating story. Lindsay Faye has done just that and her new novel Gods of Gotham (Swe: "New Yorks gudar") is published in Swedish this week.
This is not non-fiction. It's a novel and that works in its favour. The protagonist is called Timothy Wilde and is 27 years old. When the oyster bar where he works is burnt down to the ground along with a couple of other blocks on the very tip of Manhattan island in July 1845, including his own flat, he is left without a job and his savings. The silver dollars he had kept for a future marriage all melted in the fire.
During his convalescence his disorderly brother sets Timothy up with a new job. Up until May 1845 crime fighting in New York had been an affair for more or less respectable vigilantes. One of the more discipled groups was lead by George Washington Matsell and he was appointed the first NYPD chief of police.
The same year - 1845 - the by now almost mythical Irish potatoe famine ravaged Ireland.
Lindsay Faye succeeds formidably in weaving together historical facts with fiction. Sometimes you get the feeling that she isn't quite sure what sort of a novel she wants to write - a history novel, a crime novel or a sociorealistic novel - but it actually contributes to the atmosphere. Sometimes novels benefit from this ambivalence, especially when they take place in such a strange place and time as the explosive New York of the mid-19th century.
Gods of Gotham is a novel full of atmosphere, mostly reminiscent of Charles Dickens' London.
O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.
(VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1904), more here
And then I thought: "What if I write about the performance of everyday life?"
Board meetings. Or just meetings in an office environment in general. In my lifetime, I've sat through innumerable meetings of various purpose and quality. And when the subject discussed has been of lest interest to me, I've often found myself drifting off into analysing what people are doing, rather than what they are saying. Especially the ones who are not talking, what are they doing?
But how does one go about observing a meeting?
And what exactly is it that I want to observe?
I'm supposed to be gathering material for my bachelor's thesis.
I am. In a way.
But mostly I'm still thinking.
The lecture on feminism and gender studies yesterday gave me lots of interesting ideas, but not one clear path to The Subject as I had hoped.
There are three contenders:
1. something about gender roles in dance.
This is so vague an idea I don't even know if it will ever materialize into an actual anything. I suppose I could look at how women are portrayed in classical ballet vs modern dance. Or the inherent heteronormativity in a lot of dance, even modern. Or the complete lack of any hinted at sexuality in modern dance.
2. something about patriarchal structures in drama.
This idea came to be from watching The Last of the Haussmans by Stephen Beresford, because in his play there is no male lead role. Or I should say, there is no classical male patriarchal lead role. There is a matriarch. Does this shift the focus to something else? Why? Where does that place the three male roles in the play?
3. something about genderbending in drama.
When I was in London earlier this year I saw Joe Penhall's new play 'Birthday'. It focuses on Ed and Lisa, who are about to have their second baby through a (planned) caesarean. The plot twist is that it is Ed who is giving birth. One could say that this play takes place in what in fanfiction is called an Alternative Universe. It's not sci-fi, it's a fictional place where otherwise "unnatural" events are normal. So in this play men have been given the opportunity to carry a child by having an artificial womb implanted in their body. The procedure is more common among gay male couples, which makes Ed and Lisa somewhat of an anomaly at the fictional hospital where everything takes place. (There is also an interesting sub-theme about race, which I remember stood out for me when watching the show. But I may need to re-read the play-text before I comment on that.)
There is this thing that we do when entering a hotel room for the first time.
We make a mental list, a list of things that never happened in the room prior to our stay there:
- No sex was had anywhere on any surface.
- No food was digested inside the room.
- No bodily fluids were spilled onto the bed sheets.
- No hair strands of any kind were washed down the drain in the shower.
- No-one dried their naked body on the towels.
And so we are the one unique entity ever to have stayed inside those four walls.
Until we leave and the next guest arrives, making a new list.
