LiteratureBeat-4/23/09

In this week's LiteratureBeat, we talk to NYU Sociology student Edward Morec. His new piece "Objectifying New York" was just published on PlaceStudies.com and it chronicles a sort-of scavenger hunt he did around NY inspired by Paul Auster's City of Glass. We caught up with him at an empanada stand in Alphabet City.

LiteratureBeat: What was the creative genesis of this project?

Edward Morec: Well, I read City of Glass, and I read Ian Frazier's collection, and I kind of wanted to find a way to interact with the city instead of just describing it. [takes bite of empanada] Finding or buying random items seemed to be a convenient and interesting way of doing so.

LB: How did you choose the route that you took?

EM: Well, first I was going to go to all 5 boroughs in one day and collect items. Then, I got sick and didn't think I was up to that and decided to go from the top of the Bronx to the bottom of Staten Island as a...[chewing]..sort of North/South axis exploration. Then, it ended up taking so long that I just settled with making it to Staten's North Shore and turning around.

LB: How did the books you've read recently influence the style of your post?

EM: None, everything was totally original! [laughs] The matter-of-fact style of Frazier and the sort of stream-of-consciousness feel of Colson Whitehead were definitely influencing me while writing. Since the physical project was about getting random objects, it made sense to string together a bunch of loosely connected observations in my prose.

LB: In the section on Chinatown, you mention there's a good story about a statue?

EM: Yeah, the statue of Lin Zexu. This is a story I first heard on an NYU sponsored tour of Chinatown, actually. General Zexu fought the, uh, hang on [buys Snapple]...um, during the Opium Wars, he resisted the British and became a local hero to the Fujianese. So, when the Fujianese [Editor's note; Fujianese people are from Fujian Province in China which is next to Guang Dong Province and near Hong Kong, the traditional sources of Chinese immigration to New York] started arriving on East Broadway in the 80s and 90s, the city was worried that they were mixed up in drug trafficking. [takes a drink] Giuliani's administration sponsored the construction of the state as an anti-drug message and set it facing East Broadway with the inscription "Hero in the War on Drugs." So it's kind of a celebration of the Fujianese, but also a quasi racist PSA. Plus the Fujianese turned out to be less likely to be drug dealers than the Cantonese.

LB: Oh Giuliani, those were the days. From your writing it seemed you know Chinatown pretty well.

EM: Yeah, I lived at NYU's Lafayette dorm for two years. I guess I wanted to contrast my new discoveries with an area that I knew well. It was also where I planned ahead what I was going to acquire. I really like the area and choose Lafayette. That's when I started taking Cantonese and thought it would be like studying abroad or something.

LB: How did that go?

EM: Bad. [laughs] I never learned enough in class to be confident enough to order stuff in Canto or anything like that.

LB: Why was that?

EM: That's really a whole other interview....

LB: Okay. Thanks for speaking to us today

EM: Sure, you should really try the beef empanada.