Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Underground Lit: The A, B,Cs (and Ps & Qs) of the Q Train

Currently Carless in Gaza, since our daughter has use of "Dad's" Honda for her senior year upstate, Brooklyn Beat is getting reacquainted with the morning subway commute. I got the 2nd car, (the first time that I, a city lad, had ever owned my own personal car, separate from our family car) a few year's back, when I was working on Staten Island. Even after I made it back to Brooklyn, I was providing limo service for our 3 younger kids to their various schools around the borough. Finally, a little further down the road, to continue to the automotive metaphor, with 2 kids in college and our younger 2 entering high school, I am no longer needed in my morning chauffeur capacity. Now, suddenly carless, I can get up early, take a stroll up to the express stop at Newkirk, hop on the B express (if I'm lucky) or the Q local (if I'm tired and can get a seat), to DeKalb. I usually disdain the local to Court Street and walk up Fulton Street, grabbing a coffee large, skim milk, no sugar, on the way.

Anyway, the point of this pointless recounting, is that the NY Times City Room blog is assessing the current state of the NYC Subway as Reading Room. Is it true that folks read more since they can't use their phones or internet on the trains ?
I answered the survey. Last book read: Travels with Herodotus by R. Kapuschinsky. Last newspaper: One of the throwaways, AM New York or the Metro, don't remember which. Last periodical: New York Magazine fall preview issue. But truthfully, it is more of a glancing review than a heavy read. First, I find, as I'm getting older, and have lost my sea legs, that I need to mind my balance on the train as it (hopefully) rockets along. Next, I find my Ipod provides a similar, underground distraction as reading a newspaper. It is just as easy to listen to "I was made to love her" by Stevie Wonder, or "Mississipi" by Bob Dylan, or even "Basin Street Blues/When It's Sleepy Time Down South" by Louis Prima with Sam Butera's honking sax, as it is to read the paper or a book. I can glance away at the zit or hemorrhoid removal ads, and in this abstract revery, while away my train time. I think a lot of other folks do this as well. No wrestling with books or newspapers, or taking up extra subway lebensraum, shared with my already crowded in fellow riders.

The photo that accompanies the City Room article shows an almost Edenic image of the train, empty, maybe midday, or late at night, with one passenger toting a hefty volume that looks like the Jerusalem Bible, or the portable Oxford English Dictionary, while another has a paperback, trade or mass market, I can't determine. But when Brooklyn Beat is riding, around 7 AM, while it is not quite cattle car time, there are a lot of folks trying to wake up, groaning at Another Day in the Life. I see the occasional newspaper, usually the Daily News or Post, paperback novels in English, Chinese or Russian, and the occasional textbook. Can the Ipod be replacing the casual read for a lot of riders? Plus, the Q and B run outside through lower Brooklyn; intermittent phone and internet service is still somewhat possible.

In the NYC subway, although I haven't been a daily rider in a few years, the goal of most civilized riders is to maintain a modest footprint. But schools are still closed; we'll see what next week brings.

The NY TIMES Subway Reading Survey is here:
\http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/reading-while-riding/

Current Reading

  • Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
  • A Sultan in Palermo - Tariq Ali
  • Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
  • Negropedia- Patrice Evans
  • Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
  • Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
  • Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
  • Paradise Lost - John Milton
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
  • Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
  • Fringe-ology: How I Can't Explain Away the Unexplainable- Steve Volk
  • Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  • Pale King - David Foster Wallce
  • David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
  • Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
  • The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
  • Living in the End Times - Slavoj ZIzek
  • FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
  • How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
  • Where is My Jet Pack? -Daniel Wilson
  • Day of the Oprichniks - Vladimir Sorokin
  • Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
  • First Civilizations
  • Oscar Wilde -Andre Maurois
  • The Beats - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • SDS - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • The Unfinished Animal - Theodore Roszak
  • Friends of Eddy Coyle
  • Brooklands -Emily Barton
  • Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahme-Smith - Entertaining and historical
  • Dictionary of the Khazars - Pavic
  • Sloth-Gilbert Hernandez
  • War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
  • Charles Addams: An Evilution
  • Life in Ancient Greece
  • Time - Eva Hoffmann
  • Violence - S. Zizek
  • Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
  • Life in Ancient Egypt
  • Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
  • Lost Honor of Katherina Blum - Heinrich Boll - could not put it down
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed (author deserving of new wide readership)
  • Living in Ancient Mesopotomia
  • Landscape in Concrete - Jakov Lind - surreal
  • 'There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby'-Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - creepy stories - translation feels literarily "thin"
  • Mythologies - William Butler Yeats (re-read again & again)
  • How German Is It ? - Walter Abish
  • The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
  • "Flags" - an illustrated encyclopedia - wish I could remember all of these. Flag culture
  • Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
  • Ubik - Philip K. Dick
  • Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
  • Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
  • Nazi Culture - various authors
  • Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
  • Living in Ancient Rome
  • Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
  • Oblivion - David Foster Wallace - Some of his greatest work
  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
  • Netherland - Joseph O'Neill - staggeringly great read
  • Renegade - The Obama Campaign - Richard Wolffe
  • Mount Analogue - Rene Daumal
  • John Brown
  • Anathem - Neal Stephenson - love Stephenson but tough slogging first few chapters
  • 7 Deadly Sins
  • ALEX COX - Alex Cox
  • FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
  • I, Fellini - Charlotte Chandler & Federico Fellini
  • Best of 20th century alternative history fiction
  • Judah P. Benjamin - Eli Evans - Confederacy's Secretary of State & source of the W.C. Field's exclamation
  • Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
  • Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano - Mafia without the It-Am sugar coating. Brutal & disturbing
  • The Sack of Rome - Celebrity+Media+Money=Silvio Berlusconi - Alexander Stille
  • Reporting - David Remnick - terrific journalism
  • Fassbinder
  • Indignation - Philip Roth
  • Rome
  • Let's Go Italy! 2008
  • Italian Phrases for Dummies
  • How to Pack
  • Violence - Slavoj Zizek
  • Dali: Painting & Film
  • The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Jimmy Breslin
  • The Good Rat - Jimmy Breslin
  • Spook Country - William Gibson
  • A Blue Hand - The Beats in India - Deborah Baker
  • The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
  • Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
  • Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
  • Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
  • Wait Til The Midnight Hour - Writings on Black Power
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed
  • Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
  • Howl - Allen Ginsberg
  • Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
  • John Adams - David McCullough
  • The Wooden Sea - Jonathan Carroll
  • American Gangster - Mark Jacobson
  • Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Gawker Guide to Becoming King of All Media
  • Jews and Power - Ruth Wisse
  • Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
  • A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
  • Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
  • Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
  • Love & Theft - Eric Lott
  • Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
  • Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

  • Alexi Murdoch Wait
  • Wilco Summer Teeth
  • Wilco The Album
  • Carmina Burana - Ray Manzarek (& Michael Riesmann)
  • Polyrock - Polyrock
  • 96 Tears - Garland Jeffries
  • Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
  • Yellow Magic Orchestra
  • Mustang Sally Buddy Guy
  • John Lee Hooker
  • Black and White Years
  • Together Through Life - B. Dylan
  • 100 Days 100 Nites - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
  • DYLAN: 3 disc Greatest...
  • Glassworks - Philip Glass
  • Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Dinah Washington - Best of..
  • Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo