ghost writer's blog

I’m not sure what to post about for this last blog entry, so I guess I’ll just wax nostalgic for a moment (if you don’t mind.)

“A Sense of Place” was my very last Gallatin Interdisciplinary Seminar, and a few short days from now I’ll be graduating. Steve’s comments about not knowing how this class will affect us until years down the line might be true, but I’ve utilized it this semester in several ways already. Most notably, I used two of our text in my collquium. Both Tuan and Kunstler played an integral part in my discussion of how American’s create a sense of place (or rather, how, perhaps, America has no sense of place.) I guess the argument can go either way.

Colloquium aside, I’ve been thinking a lot about that phrase, “sense of place.” In two weeks I’m leaving New York to search for a new place to get a “sense” of. I’m not exactly sure why I’m leaving other than the feeling that I’ve “conquered” New York. Been there, done that, and shamefully bought six T-shirts for $10 on Canal Street. In short, I want a new sense of place.

It’s funny to think about especially at this age. This week was my birthday and in the mail I received cards from Mississippi, Alaska, Washington D.C., New York, and places in between. I find it amusing to think that we, as graduating seniors, are finally at a point where we can go out and create our own sense of place. Those cards were from friends of mine who have moved on to new towns, new jobs, and new lives. This side of five years ago all of my cards would have come, undoubtedly, from Tupelo, MS. (I warned you I would get nostalgic. I feel like I’m writing a graduation speech.) None the less, I’m moving on with that phrase in mind, wherever I may land in the next few months.

Manahatta (with outline of island today)So often collections of New York essays involve some aspect of the relationship between the people and the city, and rightfully so. The urban environment is ripe for study, and the characters that exist in those environments are equally interesting. Ian Frazier’s Gone to New York is no exception, but I wonder if Frazier ever thought about New York before people, or before the building of our urban environment.

But, where it seems other New York essayists have forgotten, someone else remembered. Enter the Manahatta Project. The Manahatta Project is, simply put, an attempt to “rebuild” or “reimagine” what the island of Manhattan looked like prior to colonization. I’ve been semi-following the Manahatta Project since my first semester at NYU watching it grow. (Most recently I saw a big glossy coffee table book at Barnes and Noble called “The Manahatta Project, and I’m assuming it’s from the same folks.)

Unfortunately, despite my continual interest in the project, I’m still not sure what the history or future of it is. When I first heard about it someone told me it was “some guy’s” project. Later, I heard a museum was going to make a scale model of the island of Manahatta (incidentally, the name “Manhattan” comes from a the original name given to the island by Natives, “Manahatta,” which roughly translates to “Many Hills.”) Now, there’s a website where you can take a virtual tour of “Manahatta” created by the Wildlife Conservation Society (click on the image at the top left to go to the website.) Even now I’m not sure who started the project, or where it came from, but I’ve been absolutely fascinated with it.

But all that said, the original island—Manahatta—makes me think of the essays about certain areas of New York that we’ve read. Imagine taking a stroll through Bowling Green when it was still, in fact, Green. Or, what would Ian Frazier write of Canal Street if he were able to walk along the river that was once there? And what if a tourist were to walk to the Empire State Building only to find trees and deer? The transformation is absolutely fascinating to be sure, and it makes me think of New York’s past present and future. (You can glean a sense of how much has changed by the attached picture. The bright green line surrounding Manahatta is actually the outline of today’s Manhattan. THAT much was created by landfill.) Maybe no one cares as much as I do, but if I had my way I’d like to take a walk through Manahatta--just for a day--rather than Manhattan and write essays about it.

What prompted you to write about this play?

A few months ago I saw the playwright perform another piece very similar to this play, and thought it spoke to my concentration in Gallatin, “Narratives of Home.” When I finally read Home Land about a month ago I was in the process of doing my colloquium (which included the Tuan text) and I couldn’t help but notice how much the play was a prime example of how Tuan says we experience mythological space.

How else does the play relate to the Tuan text?

Well, compass points aside, I think in general Standing Bear’s relationship to his homeland is a relationship that Tuan attempts to define in his text. Ultimately the book Space and Place is simply trying to discern why humans have a relationship to places and what that relationship is. More specifically, the chapter entitled “Attachments to Homeland” speaks to the emotional ties to a place and what happens if those ties are severed.

How did the interview process go?

It went well. The playwright was very happy to talk to me, though I had some difficulty in figuring out what to ask. I wasn’t sure what angle my paper would take at the time (all I knew was that it had something to do with home) so I didn’t know specifically what types of questions I should ask (i.e. about structure, plot, etc.)

What difficulties did you run into?

I started out unsure of what the paper would be about, and in some ways I’m still unsure. It’s neither decidedly about structure and compasses, or about Standing Bear’s relationship to home, but a little about both. I didn’t necessarily want it to be about both, but I realized that no matter what any way I chose to write about the play would relate to “A Sense of Place” so I ended up just letting the themes flow out and segue as they did.

Why is home such a common theme in literature and drama?

Chief Standing Bear(NOTE: Because this appears on a public website, I’ve chosen not to provide the playwright’s name.)

In early April of 2009 I was invited to interview a playwright about a commissioned work that has been in development for the past few years. The playwright, an adjunct professor in Gallatin, was commissioned to write the play now titled Home Land by the Lied Center of Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The play, originally intended to be the story of the trial of Ponca Chief Standing Bear, evolved into a much larger piece concerning the relationship between people and their homes, a definition of “a sense of place.” However, Chief Standing Bear’s story is not lost within the story of the play itself.
The story of Chief Standing Bear is, ultimately, a story of home, and of ownership of place. The story, in brief, goes something like this:

In the years after the Civil War the Bureau of Indian Affairs forced the Ponca Indians from their homeland on the Niobrara River in Nebraska to Oklahoma (then called “Indian Territory.”) Naturally, the Ponca along with their Chief Standing Bear, were none to pleased to be forced out of their homes. But forced they were, and they ultimately arrived in Oklahoma after an exodus that included death, illness and starvation.

Auster as GraphicI had a hard time deciding what to blog about for Paul Auster’s City of Glass. Originally, I thought about doing an entry on walking New York and the flaneur, but it seems several people beat me to that idea, and I didn’t want to get repetitive. Instead, I decided to do a Google search about the book and see what interesting information I could find.

I learned that in 1994 Auster’s City of Glass was adapted into a graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik, who worked as lead illustrator. I was able to read a few sample pages of the graphic novel via Google Books, and I couldn’t help but notice how appropriate it seemed that Auster’s bizarre, surrealist story works as an illustrated text.

According to Wikipedia, “The original printing was received very well, and the work was chosen as one of the 100 Most Important Comics of the Century.” The noir aspect of the novel (especially with the stylized detective-like nature) lends itself to the graphic genre, and creating a sense of place of a city like New York in the novel bodes well with the black and white ink drawings. Form follows function very well.

Art Spiegelman, who introduces the text, says that the interplay between words and pictures in the graphic novel are particularly interesting. Instead of using the traditional “word balloons” found in other comics, dialogue is depicted in ink wells, storm drains, and cave paintings. Spiegelman (according to Wikipedia) “was particularly impressed with this section of the book, noting how well it translates Auster’s descrpitions of Stillman’s speech patterns.” I’ve yet to read the actual graphic novel myself, but I’d like to see what the introduction of images adds to Auster’s text overall.

Tuan, Jim, and HuckIn his essay entitled “Attachment to Homeland,” Yi-Fu Tuan discusses the human drive to attach emotion to place saying that, “attachment to homeland is a common human emotion... The more ties there are the stronger the emotional bond.” He goes on to say, “A people may become strongly attached to a natural feature because more than one tie yoke them to it.”
As a literature concentration, I can’t help but apply this to a very specific book in American Literature. For my colloquium, I used the Tuan text in relation to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to discuss this human relationship to a natural feature. Undoubtedly, the Mississippi River becomes a home for both Huck and Jim during their travels, and appropriately so.
Both Jim and Huck are ultimately displaced individuals, and ultimately, can only create a home outside of society’s bounds. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates discusses the symbiotic relationship between a place (or a home) and it’s people (or an individual.) He calls it duty. So often when we think of the concept of “home” we automatically imply a sense of ownership, “This is my home, or hometown, or favorite spot, and I can do whatever I want and be whoever I want while I’m here.” But we forget that home must be a symbiotic relationship because, inevitably, there will always be some sort of political or social institutions in place. If we don’t abide by the rules of home we can be forced out. This is how Huck and Jim become displaced individuals, and are forced to create a new home for themselves.
Huck, be it his personality or extenuating circumstances, can’t follow the rules set up for him by the Widow Douglas at the beginning of the book, nor can he stay under his “Pap’s” control. The river—the natural feature that Tuan talks about—becomes the ideal place for Huck to make a home, and it is no coincidence that by not being able to “abide by the rules of home” he can’t stay there (even if he’s not forcibly thrown out.)
The very same is true of Jim. As a slave, Jim is under countless restrictions and rules based on the rules of his role/class in society, and the “rules” of race relations in a slave state prior to the Civil War. But on the river Jim is no longer a slave.
Once Huck and Jim are aboard the raft, they can create entirely new rules. Getting back to the natural world (with only the rules of nature to adhere to) means that a young white child and a slave can become friends, can share personal experiences, and become equals where they never could within the bounds of their “civilized society.”

CompassIn his chapter titled “Mythical Space and Place” Tuan discusses human relationships to points on the compass: North, South, East, and West. He states, “The United States as a whole is divided up into North and South, East and West. Unlike Australian use of directional terms, regional labels in the United States are not promulgated by central authority; like the regions of mythical space the names and meanings of American regions are acquired in the cours of time, as part of the growing lore and literature of a people.”
American regionality (i.e. Midwesterners, Southerners, Northeasterners, etc.) are still defined by the points on a compass and, like in his interpretation of people in relation to mythical space, Tuan seems to be saying that American “regional people” have created their own mythical spaces based on the regional identity we have created. He even says that the meanings of a region are “part of the growing lore and literature of a people.”
It seems we’re still living in relation to our mythic spaces. Tuan describes the past civilizations—ancient Greeks and the Salteaux Indians—and how they relate to their mythical spaces. For instance, the Salteaux use the compass points to describe a religious belief where the South is the land of the dead, and so on.
Today we do the same thing. Though our beliefs may not be necessarily religious in belief, we do believe in the knowledge of American places even if they are not true. For instance the mythical belief of New Yorkers is that they are unfriendly which isn’t true. We have created mythical spaces in American regions based on legend and lore: all culture exists in the northeast, the south is racist, Midwesterners are freakishly religious. But these are just myths... There’s no way such all encompassing statements like these can be true of all the people in a place. But we have, as Tuan says, created these mythical places for ourselves just as the Greeks and Salteaux did before us.

For the most part, I think I focused on the difference between the civilized and the uncivilized in my blog posts and during in-class discussions. I guess the books we read lend themselves to this subject, but as obvious as it might be I still like to think about it. I think what I realized most is that these “civilized travelers” (Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Polo, etc.) were all searching for some sort of “magical land.” Not literally, of course, but there always seemed to be a search for perfection. Columbus looked for Eden, Polo seemed to want to fuse the best of “both worlds” and I think CdV’s journey was nothing short of “magical.”
Of course, once they got to these lands they were seeking there were some unfortunate events (in most cases), and those blemishes shouldn’t be erased or forgotten by any means. Perhaps Columbus really did find Eden, but it was destroyed because the Europeans and the Natives couldn’t live harmoniously together. How would the history of the world changed if Columbus had been able to maintain Eden? I guess it’s not even worth asking at this point.
But this incessant search for “better” lands, inevitably leads to some sort of hope that we all associate with travel. If Columbus was looking for Eden, and CdV went searching for El Dorado, what do we search for when we travel? And when we get there do we destroy it (purposefully or accidentally) or do we preserve it? I always travel thinking that where I’m going is somehow “better.” New York was “better” so I moved here, Italy was “better” so I went there. I think these explorers had similar thoughts, even if they weren’t quite sure what they were looking for. But either way, the idea and idealization of travel never really dies. As much as we might affect the lands we land on, we always hope to get away to something better. At least I do.

Magical LandsIn Shakespeare’s The Tempest the island is metaphorically set off from the rest of the natural world by its magical elements. On the island we see sprites, a “magician” (Prospero) spells that conjure spirits and storms, etc. But the island also comes to represent something else: an escape from civilization. The island’s liminality is indicated by its lack of civilization (i.e. governmental infrastructure, beurocracy, and constitutional law.) But what does magic have to do with civilization?

Two other texts, The Wizard of Oz and The Odyssey, may offer an explanation. In The Wizard of Oz the good witch of the North asks Dorothy what country she is from when Dorothy tells her she has never met a real witch. Dorothy replies, “I am from Kansas.” The witch (by the way, in the book her name is not Glinda) then asks, “is it a civilized country?”

“Oh, yes.” Dorothy replies.

“That explains it then,” says the witch, “Oz is not a civilized country and therefore still has witches and wizards and other magic. But I have never seen a civilized country that still has all this.”

Similar themes are discussed in the Odyssey where Ithaca would be “civilized” and the uncharted islands of the Mediterranean (i.e. Calypso’s island, the land of the Cyclops, etc.) are liminal spaces devoid of government.

Perhaps what these books get at is the idea of power and control. For civilians to have control (read: magic) in the “uncivilized” lands means that they can create the rules, or control elements to bend to their favor. However, in the civilized worlds we allow governmental institutions to “control” for us, and therefore we give up the magic in the way Prospero does at the end of The Tempest. Even more interesting is the desire to give up that magic. Dorothy wants to leave the magical land for home, as do Odysseus and Prospero. What does this say of human nature? Do we prefer to be controlled, and have power institutionalized rather than have free flowing systems of power depending upon our own “magical” skills?

…I thought it was something to think about.

Oxford SignpostFor two years I attended the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. While I was there, I never thought much of the place other than, “I live here.” But looking back on my memories of the town, all I can remember is how truly picturesque it was. When we talk about a “sense of place” the word “charm” tends to be thrown around, and there is undoubtedly an Oxford charm. In a five minute drive around town, one will pass William Faulkner’s house (Rowan Oak), John Grisham’s house, the historic Ole Miss campus made noteworthy for its law school and James Meredith, and Square Books, one of the most famous independent book stores in the country (and if one was there in 2008, he would have been able to see the 2008 Presidential Debate between John McCain and Barack Obama.)

As a college town, Oxford naturally has a strong sense of history and community. The University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, is a University with a strong sense of family history. I once met an eighth generation Ole Miss student in a literature class. The same is true of the town. Driving along Old Taylor road, one will see plantation style homes (on smaller lots, of course) with a magnolia canopy overhead. In the distance is the courthouse acting as a focal point at the end of the street. Around the courthouse is “The Square,” what Oxford is most famous for, and what I consider to be the ideal place.