Everybody seems to have a New York City story, in much the same way seemingly every New Yorker has a 9/11 story. Everyone from E.B. White through Michael Stipe have put pen to paper to wax rhapsodic about what a heartless bitchcake the great C of NY can be. Whether you’ve grown up here or whether you spent one crazy summer here, the city has a way of making an indelible impression on you. And whether it’s the city’s history or its reputation or its myriad stereotypes, something about New York City seems to conjure in everyone it touches the need to write about it in floridly histrionic ways. I mean, no one’s ever written a caustic, tear-stained paean about leaving New Haven or St. Louis or San Diego.
In any case, one Christopher Solomon wrote a melancholy little piece for the New York Times’ City Room blog last week about just that. Solomon writes with palpable pathos about his two years in NYC and how his heart was broken by both the woman he followed here and by the city itself. By no means is his story unique, but hey – he got a piece in the Times, and that’s no small feat, so kudos to him.
But Solomon’s piece is really only half the story. The other side fidgets angrily in the comments section. While Solomon may have taken a minor pot shot at the city the scorned him, the city actively bites back and lets him know it. True to form, most of the comments are scathingly unsympathetic. Solomon’s basically reduced to a dilettante crybaby with dubious writing skills by “real” New Yorkers and bitter pedants.
At the end of it, I don’t know which side I sympathize with. I was born and raised here in Manhattan and am capable of being as insufferably precious and self-righteous about it as many of poor Christopher Solomon’s disdainful detractors. By the same token, I don’t claim to own New York City. I may live here, but the city could happily go on without me. In fact, given the spiraling costs required to live here (much less feed, house and educate your children if you’re foolhardy enough to procreate here), I have grave doubts about being able to stay in my home town. Moreover, with the passing of each year, more and more of what I’ve loved about this city has eroded or vanished completely. That doesn’t mean I want to leave, but if I had to leave, I could take some small solace in that fact.
But, as Christopher himself has doubtlessly learned by this point, NYC has no time for whiny sob stories.
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