Weekend Open Thread:
The Lordly Hudson

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The lordly Hudson, photographed by Jean Ruaud, 19 May 2009.

Last Week at Portico: In spite of spending a great part of the week out and about with Jean Ruaud, I got a great deal done. Well, I took care of le minimum: the Book Review review, natch; Ramin Bahrani’s Goodbye Solo; and, most important of all, a page — a preliminary page — on Vestal McIntyre’s magnificent first novel, Lake Overturn

On the dust jacket, Kate Christensen compares the novel to Middlemarch, and she is not wrong to do so. Lake Overturn is also a book written, as Virginia Woolf put it, for grown-up people. But its twelve year-old ensemble lead, Enrique Cortez, may be the first gay boy in literature to give Tom Sawyer a run.

6 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread:
The Lordly Hudson”

  1. Quatorze says:

    Fort Tryon Park is one of the loveliest parks in the city, and possibly in the world. The parks trees surrounding the lawns are as full, stately and bucolic as the best tended trees on the great European estates. The string of gardens, with benches, pocket lawns and stone abutments and drum towers is a constantly changing kaleidoscope of color and texture, all with the towering Palisades, the majestic Hudson, a cloud-skeined sky and the looming George Washington Bridge in the background, the Cloisters floating in the distance on its craggy promontory as a dream out of a lost age.

    Up until the early post-war period, the park was unlighted by lampposts at night, and people could wander in the dark, seeing the glow of moonlight glancing off the cliffs on the west side of the river as the water’s surface twisted in moire patterns in the unending fight of freshwater onrushing south as the salted tidal water fought to bully its way north. My mother grew up in this area, when the spine of Art Deco apartments were built for, and inhabited, by well-to-do refugees from a war-bound Europe and the girls at the Catholic High School knelt in prayer facing the glass casket of Mother Cabrini on the altar of the schools amazing chapel; a mix of modern extingency and ancient belief. It was a New York of many different people, bound together by the idea of “metropolitanism”; they were all citizens of a great city before they were members of individual ethnic groups. I was in the park a number of years ago, when the city was strapped for funds and maintenace had gone to the wall, and found it heartening to see that those new immigrant groups which had inherited the park held it in trust just as well as those who preceeded them; the metropolitan ideal of magnificent space for public use had proved its worth.

  2. jkm says:

    Beautiful photograph…and a most lyrical description of the park, Quatorze! Also a very timely post for me. Last night, we spent some time with an old friend from the DC area and, as often happens, conversation turned to our dream of jointly acquiring a pied-à-terre in New York. Our friend, who has actually done some research into New York real estate, is now focused on apartments in the Fort Tryon Park area. Does anyone have any comments (pro/con) about living in that part of the city? Obviously, the park is a significant ‘pro.’

  3. JR says:

    Very interesting post and commentaries, thanks a lot everybody for the insights. I liked very much Fort Tyron Park and found it very beautifully conceived, well maintained and respected by its users. A wonderful place indeed.

  4. Ellen Moody says:

    Dear RJ,

    As I have done before, I tried to comment on your reviews of book reviews. But I can’t make out the form so it will be sent.

    In brief, what I said was to defend the reviewing of reviews. I think reviews are a very important (influential, framing) form. When great or famous writers die, people collect up these reviews and they can be among the best of someone’s essays. Like Gore Vidal or Samuel Johnson. Your comments often show this.

    Did you see we had to retire our old blog and have two new ones. One for essays for Jim and I on topics (wordpress.com), and another more casual spontaneous one for personal and travel comments too for me (livejournal.com).

    I hope you and Kathleen are having a good holiday weekend together. The weather is very pretty here too. I often enjoy your photos. Sorry not to post to you more often.

    Ellen

  5. George says:

    As for what I would be prepared to commit to if installed in lodgings anywhere near the Cloisters, I would commit to visit daily using the time to clear my mind early in the day so that after lunch I could return to my lodgings and write of my unique life experience in such a way as to convey the meaning I have taken from it without describing all the specific events and details. Yes, I would commit to that. Where do I apply for this stipend or is it a paid sabbatical? Bye the bye, is a per diem paid or must I feed myself? Free lodgings in NYC would certainly be a plus making table fare much easier for me to come by given my weaknesses in the area of gainful employment at the income level required to live anywhere comfortably in Manhattan.

  6. Quatorze says:

    Dear jkm
    The neighborhood is historically known to be “better”, or more solidly middle-class, west of Broadway, and usually, if not always, better the further west one goes. Some of the best are the edge along the highway and the spine, or avenue (Fort Tryon?) that is opposite Mother Cabrini High School and runs toward one of the park entrances and the A train station. The neighborhood is also slightly honeycombed with little vest pocket parks and the most gracious buildings are the complexes running along the river overlook, in styles ranging from Tudor and Castle Gothic to Regency/Georgian, with Art Deco making itself felt either overtly in design, or subtly in layout, with historical window dressing. Many apartments are large, with sunken living rooms and multiple outlooks over park, interior landscaped courts, and river. The neighborhood held its own during the city’s nadir in the 70’s, but was effectively stranded by being surrounded by areas that had gone very bad. Now, things are distinctly better, especially since the onslaught of gay men moving in and renovating during the 90’s, briefly earning the area the monicker, “The Swish Alps”.