Archivo

“Heidegger in New York”

Leonard’s coda for his essay’s on the class separation growing in NYC symbolized by Fifth Avenue, “Fifth Avenue [read: Mayor Koch and NY movers and shakers] has never wanted us, the unlicensed and unwashed.” He goes on to pine for a better, more democratic, more truly diverse NY but warns that it will never happen “…with Crazy Eddie [Koch] and his Pinkertons [referencing the union busting era of Samuel Gompers].” A very short essay that he ends with:

And many years from now, after there’s cable television in Queens [read: where the real people live], a child will ask, ‘Daddy, before the revolution, why were you in jail?’ And the Father will reply, ‘I was an illegal vendor.’ […like the ones swept off 5^th Avenue by Mayor Koch]”

New phrase: Sein zum tode = German Heideggerian (yes, that’s a word) term for a dread of death that leads to an authentic perspective on being.

New learning: The Barthelme quoted in this piece (and other esssays by Leonard) is Donald Barthelme, the Houston author “…knowm for his playful postmodernism.”

He wrote in the short story “Great Days”:

“—What do the children say?
—There's a thing the children say.
—What do the children say?
—They say: Will you always love me?
—Always.
—Will you always remember me?
—Always.
—Will you remember me a year from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me two years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me five years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Knock knock.
—Who's there?
—You see?”

("Great Days," Forty Stories)

I’ll have to add Forty Stories to my reading list on Goodreads.