City Spaces in literature

[dark desire]

I am preparing for an M.Phil proposal and the following interview. The topic for my research is modernist spaces, particularly the New York city, in the fictions of F Scott Fitzgerald. Please suggest relevant texts to look at that talks about depiction of the modern city in modernist texts.

[mal4mac]

"Alone in Berlin" by Hans Fallada - the hero places cards attacking Hitler's regime all around Berlin during in the war. The Gestapo inspector pursuing him puts a map of Berlin on his wall and puts up a flag for each card. It might be interesting to try and reproduce that map!

Bellow's depiction of New York in "the dangling man" might be worth comparing to Fitzgerald - and of course Chicago looms large in many of his novels.

Joyce's Dublin is an obvious example.

Pessoa's Lisbon in "The Book of Disquiet"

Kundera's Prague in "The unbearable lightness of being" etc.

[Marbles]

London in Hanif Kureishi's Something to Tell You.

[Seasider]

Colin McInnes wrote 3 novels collectively known as The London Trilogy. Absolute Beginners ...emphasis on the emerging youth movement,City of Spades, about black immigrants into London and Mr Love and Justice about the London Underworld of Sex and Crime. As a Londoner and born in the area he writes about in the first two books, I was very impressed with them. A film was made of Absolute Beginners but I didn't see it.

[dark desire]

Thank You folks. That helped.

[mal4mac]

Lanark by Alasdair Gray combines realist and dystopian surrealist depictions of his home city of Glasgow.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh is quite good at portraying the seedier side of Edinburgh. As much of Fitzgerald is "a drunks eye view of New York" it might bear comparison to Welsh!

Glasgow is interesting to compare to New York, tenements loom large in both as living spaces, as does the sea faring side of things. (Although Glasgow is/was more about the ship building side of things, where New York is about arrival by ship!) And there are the gangs of course (!) And you have "the projects" to compare to failures like the Gorbals tower blocks.

[Seasider]

I haven't read much of Edith Wharton but The Age of Innocence" is said to be good onNew York. Would make a good. contrast with Fitzgerald I imagine.

[mal4mac]

Interesting article on the depiction of US cities in sitcoms, especially New York:

"The "idiot box" is not ordinarily considered as a serious didactic tool. Though its primary purpose may be the peddling of soap or cars, even the most lightweight television show shapes and disseminates our most elemental images of society, especially in the minds of the young. Television gives most of us our first glimpse of unfamiliar cities: how they look, and what it means to live there."

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jul/29/american-sitcoms-cities-depict-new-york-state-mind

And books (the Guardian culture editor must be going to NY for his/her summer break!)

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jul/29/reading-american-cities-new-york-books

[JBI]

Lao she's Beijing, Mao dun's Shanghai, Baudelaire's Paris, fengmenglong's nanjing, soseki's Tokyo, Davies' Toronto, etc.

[kelby_lake]

High Rise by JG Ballard. Although the action is contained within the building, it's an urban building.

[maxphisher]

Open City by Teju Cole might be a good option. You might also want to read Michel de Certeau's essay, "Walking in the City."

[mal4mac]

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates is about two Greenwich Village/Columbia University boho types who move from New York city to the suburbs - it's very strong on how the part of the city you live in can very much affect your life.

[kelby_lake]

You could also look at films like Metropolis.

Maybe look into the history of urbanisation.

[Nick Capozzoli]

This is an interesting topic. I think that films, like Metropolis, provide (fictional and real) memorable cityscapes, , as do many other films, especially film noire from the 40's and 50's. There's also the cityscapes you can find in visual arts, like photography, etchings, and drawings (think Hogarth). For some reason I can't recall many literary cityscapes, but there are a few: Arthur Conan Doyle's 19th Century London of Sherlock Holmes and Raymond Chandler's mid-20th Century LA come to mind. Indeed, for some reason, "detective" fiction seems to provide memorable descriptions of the towns and cities where the action occurs. Edith Warton and Henry James give pretty memorable descriptions of late 19th-early 20th Century NYC society, including their habitations.

[ChicagoReader]

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell.