Transparent City
I just came back from London. Mostly talking to game and comics people in connection with a book I wrote a while ago (Killing Monsters) and a book I'm contemplating starting (a sort of sequel to Men of Tomorrow), but also squeezing in some research on The Undressing of America, because London is where Bernarr and Mary Macfadden met, and the seeds of confessional, exhibitionistic, and voyeuristic media were planted.
Places change when I change: that is, what's in my head changes how a place looks to me. I've been to London many times, starting when I was 14, and it's always been a slightly different city. This time it was a city shaped by this book. I stood in front of the office building on the Strand where Macfadden and his bride had run the magazines that affected so much in our cultural landscape, and everything I saw seemed to reference them.
Joggers carrying on Macfadden's crusade for physical fitness. Women dressed in jeans and t-shirts referring back to his war against corsets and constricting dresses. Cheap magazines and comic books in the newsagents' still bearing witness to his role in the birth of independent publishing. (I dropped in on a comics convention at the Excel Centre.) The seeds of True Story magazine sending up shoots everywhere as celebrity gossip and tabloid journalism. (I popped into a shop with my friend Rachel to buy something to eat, and within seconds she'd vanished from sight; I found her at the magazine rack, where some headline about Cheryl Cole had screamed at her.) And even public pornography: a guy in a pub with a tabloid open to the bare-breasted woman on Page 3.
I was looking at a place I'd looked at many times and not seeing much of anything new on the surface. But this time I could look through it—a city suddenly transparent—to see strange figures of a century ago, building and shaping it.
About Gerard
Right now I'm writing a nonfiction book for FSG, The Undressing of America, about the bizarre cabal of cultural fringies who revolutionized publishing in the '20s with the original "reality media." I have a graphic novel, drawn by Mark Badger,...
Connections
Writing about the 18th and 19th century,
I experience this same transparency about cities. It's something stronger than imagination, and not always as cosy. I believe it's a tuning into how it would have been.
It's natural to view places subjectively, but the London of your teens and twenties and thirties has changed. It doesn't have the same vital energy, or cleanliness, as it did in those days. The buzz has turned into panic, drivenness and attitude. Perhaps, it's just me. The capital is still rich with culture and history, but the soul of the people (of the nation) is not what it was.
It would be interesting to hear if that struck you and how it compares/contrasts with New York, Washington, San Francisco.
Hi Rosy!
As time goes by I become increasingly convinced that I'll never be able to see anything outside my own subjectivity. The London I remember from 1975 and 1980 was exciting but also gritty and a bit threatening—maybe the effect of the long recession, but maybe just how it looked to a suburban kid on his own who wasn't used to big cities. This past trip, London felt more vibrant and beautiful than ever before—but then this was also by far the best social experience I've ever had there, and my mood was soaring. In 1980 I lived for over a month near Portobello Road and loved it. But a few days ago I went back there with a very good friend and thought how much more charming it had become. So I have no idea what the real character of London is. It's enough of challenge for me just to keep track of my own reality!
G