"And you there: Aren't you somehow right here with me? I mean, who doesn't still dream of a world other than this one? Who among us -- if it means letting go of the insanity, the mystery, the total useless beauty of the million once-possible New Yorks -- is ready even now to give up hope?"
Quasi-quarantine felt like the right time to tackle the monumental "City on Fire," Garth Risk Hallberg's +900-page novel. While the (perhaps overly) ambitious work gets bogged down on occasion through sheer heft and pedantry, this book is capable of great beauty and insight into the human spirit.
He effectively depicts New York City from a number of different social strata, painting a vivid picture of the 1970s scene as a microcosm for how the country as a whole was trying to redefine itself.
"They were everywhere he looked, suddenly, these kids who no longer believed in progress. And why should they? Progress was Watergate and Mutually Assured Destruction. Progress had looked on as tracts of jungle and thatched huts disappeared beneath a carpet of flame. Progress had raped villages at My Lai and bayoneted babies."
Hallberg carefully and deftly treads the sometimes overlapping lines between cynicism, hilarity ("For the rest of the ride, he had to picture the wobble of President Ford's jowls in order not to pop a full-blown bone."), racism, irony, and classism.
Elsewhere, Hallberg even unwittingly touches on some of the side benefits of social distancing.
"To pretend not to see him would tax credulity. How much simpler the world would be if people could admit openly to hating each other! On the other hand, this was not that world. And William still believed, questions of utopia aside, in the social graces."
While often conveying the sense that this is many books in one, Hallberg has managed to pull together disparate storylines into a coherent whole. The ability to capture the zeitgeist of a time and place is one of the biggest compliments that can be paid an author, and Hallberg has done so here.
"He let his burning forehead rest against the inside of the window and watched the empty streets scroll by, sparkler sticks, downtrodden little flags, the metal gates of loading docks graffiti'd with the hundred secret names of God."
"City on Fire" reminded me a bit of Eleanor Henderson's "Ten Thousand Saints" in its exploration of NYC subculture. And while Hallberg's piece may have been better served by ending a couple of hundred pages earlier, this book is well worth the considerable effort.
"Waiting for the end. Knowing each other as we do, we probably wouldn't need to say anything out loud. But I guess what I would want to leave each of you with finally -- tender some Evidence of, against a life's worth of signs to the contrary -- comes down simply to this: You are infinite. I see you. You are not alone."
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