It’s A Wonderful Town

1.

Adolescence

The New York Times Book Review published an interview with a woman whose novel had been given the place of honor in the Book Review that week. Her novel, according to the Times, traced a woman called Vida through her years in the Movement. Of the Movement, the author of the novel remembered this:

I remember walking around with other organizers and fantasizing about what we would do after the revolution with all the buildings, what human uses they could be put up to. What marvelous daycare centers and hospices they would become.

This woman was talking about New York City. Her idea had been that the revolution would bring better parks to New York, and beautiful places to live, and day-care centers, and hospices. Her idea was that New York should be human. Now, this is simply a mistake. New York is an inhuman machine put together to serve the most ambitious interests of a certain part of America secular society. It has human aspects, because human needs must be met before ambitions can proceed toward realization, but the fulfillment of those human needs is an uninteresting precondition of the life of the ambitions. In human terms, there is no reason to live in New York, and if New York were to become a city in which day-care centers and hospices were the dominant institutions it would soon be depopulated.

George W. S. Trow
WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF NO CONTEXT

2.

3.

Home is so Sad

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Philip Larkin