Out of Ohio

Baudrillard, America.In his collection of essays, Frazier has crossed the works of Baudrillard with Kerouac, making AMERICA as personal as ON THE ROAD. I was struck early on with the phrase ‘authentic American’, something both Baudrillard and Kerouac strove to pin down. Similarly, Frazier tries to pin down the authenticity of the city with tales of apartments, districts, floating bags, the skyline, etc.

The passage that struck me the most was Out of Ohio (of course). Frazier reflects up on his childhood in Hudson, Ohio from his matured perspective in New York. He discusses the details of the town, he finds him self caught up in the clichés of the ‘nostalgic mid-America’ (186). And because there is a sense of ‘corniness’ in his tone when he discusses home with New Yorkers, it puts them off.

Later on, when visiting a girl friend from home, he discusses how she stated that he was a ‘real person’ because he had grown up in Hudson like her. Frazier explains that growing up in Hudson, you already knew everyone you saw on the street, so anytime you met someone from outside of Hudson it was hard to ‘take them seriously’ (192). There is a sense of reality then with familiarity, and anything that is new is but a myth.

Like Frazier, I too have difficulty explaining home to New York, and vis versa. Anytime someone asks me to describe where I am from, I stumble along trying to figure out how to put it in words. Its easy to give them logistics of the town: the population is this number, the high school has this many students, over there is the courthouse, that is the house I grew up in, etc. But it becomes a lost cause trying to capture the essence of the place in words. I end up falling into the clichés of Southern Ohio, Northern Kentucky: ‘its Appalachia’. Likewise, anytime I am home and someone asks me how to describe New York, I don’t know where to begin. Of course its monstrous, busy and never sleeps, and those are the clichés that usually come out. But the experiences I have had here day after day put those words to shame.

Looking back at former essays from freshmen year about my transition into the city, I came across a rather peculiar and vague discussion about the generalizations of America’s towns:

'Generalizations abstract the perceptions of reality, the aura of life. It has become essential to package everything into one rationale and box it up. Cultures are torn apart and reconstructed into simulated “utopias” that are easier to translate onto paper. Filled with semi-cultures in the thousands, the U.S. is generalized into its cities and centers of economic importance. The various cultures of the Midwest are abridged together into one generalization of a simplistic life with hometown values.'

It seems I was trying to make some sense of this dual life I was living between home and school (which is also apparent in the writing; I struggled balancing the straightforward voice of home with the abstraction of NY). I was getting frustrated with the clichés that I was using to describe my hometown, feeling that they never gave it the justice it deserved. Even after being here for three years, I only now am beginning to understand the essence of both home and NY. Now I have to decide whether to leave one behind or live in both simultaneously. Because by choosing New York, as Frazier notes, the past is gone (203). I am not sure I am willing to risk it.