Ferrante vs. Franzen

In the 19^th century the novel was king of the narrative arts as the drama was in an earlier era and before that the epic poem. The novel was largely overthrown in the 20^th century by the movie. In the 21^st century the movie has, in its turn, been pushed aside by the TV series. Whereas a film generally has a cultural impact lasting a week or 2, a TV series like The Wire, or Mad Men, or Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones, can remain a part of the cultural conversation for years. I'm as susceptible as the next person to these marathon narratives, yet retain a nostalgic fondness for the novel. For one thing, it's a less tyrannical art form. Whereas a film or TV series utterly dominates you with music, visual images, and dialog, forcing you into a passive role, the novel allows you to participate in the creation. It merely suggests and lets you fill in the rest. It's a more intimate art form.

The last night in August we attended a publication party for Jonathan Franzen's new novel Purity. Franzen was there and I was charmed by him. He made a few opening remarks, read a selection, entertained questions. It was clear that speaking in public was not his favorite activity, but he managed it with wit and aplomb. I felt he would probably be an entertaining dinner companion. The selection he read was composed of lively, inventive sentences, as were the opening sentences of the book, as I dipped into it over the next week. It was clever, laced with humor. But somewhere between page 36 and page 45 I realized that, despite the quality of the sentences, I wasn't all that interested in the characters he was describing. 

Around that time The Story of the Lost Child, the 4^th and final volume of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan tetralogy, arrived in the mail. I'd had it on pre-order. Opening it, I was immediately sucked in, even though it had been a year since I'd read the previous volume. Of course, having read the previous 3 books, I knew all the characters and was already instilled with curiosity about them and their fates. Frieda, who had been postponing starting the series until the publication of the final volume, began the first volume, My Brilliant Friend, at the same time. Ferrante's appeal is not so much the construction of high style sentences as the creation of living, breathing characters that you care about, described with an unprecedented degree of honesty and candor. Her passion for her characters is clear in the way she lavishes attention on them. The sentences are not flashy, they downplay clever metaphors that tend to keep you on the surface of the text. Instead, her sentences are transparent. You look through them into the depths of the characters, and this gives them authenticity. The prose carries you. Feelings you had barely sensed are described with clarity, and this may lead to a catharsis of sorts. Not only did I weep again and again on my voyage through the text, but weeks afterward, whenever I thought about it, the tears would well up again. Just the poignancy of it all, of life, the way that everything we care about most deeply is, in the end, swept away. Frieda, who ripped through the entire tetralogy in a few weeks despite the interruption of the trip and her efforts to slow down, said it reminded her of the great Italian films The Best of Youth and Cinema Paradiso. “There's something about the Italians,” she said. “They just get it.” And they try to get it all in.

I finished Ferrante before we left on our trip to eastern Europe. After we got back I decided to start over with Purity. It required some effort; it's the more demanding prose to read, with a lot of surface action. Intermittently I enjoyed it, though without developing much feeling for the characters, which remained concepts rather than actual people. The character that most came alive for me was Tom, perhaps because a chapter is written in his voice, in the 1^st person. It's the only 1^st person narration in the book and 1^st person is the natural way to tell a story, it's the way everyone speaks in conversation. Thus it communicates verisimilitude, authenticity. Third person, by contrast, seems artificial, contrived, mere literature. After all, in real life there are no omniscient narrators. No one is omniscient.

I developed an intellectual interest in what Franzen was going to do with his characters, because Franzen is an interesting guy, but they didn't touch me emotionally. And as soon as he switched to the 1^st person, his prose backed up, became cooler and even more analytic, as if he didn't want to get too close to his character, didn't want to care about him too much, or was unable to. Perhaps a fear of slipping into sentimentality, the bugaboo of male American writers, holds him back. Rather than warm, emotional and engaged, like Ferrante, he is comic, intellectual and detached. (Comedy requires a certain detachment). He feels safer that way. With Franzen you frequently find yourself saying “Wow, what a clever metaphor,” whereas with Ferrante you're more likely to find yourself saying “I can't believe she's doing that!” They are different sorts of pleasures. But I suspect the writer who is deeply moving is the rarer type.

Franzen apparently feels that a book should have a topical theme. In Freedom it was overpopulation, a theme I have great sympathy for and that favorably disposed me toward the book. This one is something about the internet, the death of privacy and the downside of fame in an era in which everyone craves fame as a hedge against mortality as the hedge of religion continues to fail. These themes do seem perhaps slightly more trivial if more personal than the concerns of Freedom. But the problem with hitching your star to social topics like these is that 30 years from now they may no longer be salient and this may leave your novel heavily dated or even irrelevant. One of the themes of the Neapolitan tetralogy, on the other hand, is the difference between the people who stay in the town where they grew up and the ones who set off into the unknown. Somehow this seems a more fundamental, more basic, and more enduring trait in the human personality, something that will never be resolved. Not a social issue but a psychological one; rather than topical, timeless.

Finally, I think it comes down to this: there is enough going on in Franzen to make him worth reading, but it is Ferrante who gets a bigger slice of the pie of life into her oven. And it's not merely because she had more pages to work with. She dives deeper into the maelstrom of human personality. And she's writing for posterity rather than for the present.

Budapest

Chain Bridge from our Hotel

In the morning we took the U1 back to the Hauptbahnhof and caught the 10 o'clock train to Budapest. There was a crush and a couple of mohawked punks were in our reserved seats. They acceded to our demands that they vacate, but left their suitcase. Frieda was suspicious of them and wondered half-seriously if there was a bomb in the bag. But in a few minutes they returned for it, revealing they were just absent-minded. 

After traversing a verdant landscape of small farms, we got into town about 1. The cold was now working its way down into my chest, making my bronchi hot and scratchy. Fortunately we had decided to luxe it up a bit so a driver for the Sofitel in Pest picked us up at the station and guided us through the crowds of refugees. Our room wasn't ready so we left our luggage and took a walk across the nearby Chain Bridge. On the Buda side we had a spritz at a cafe called, oddly, the Meat Boutique. As in Prague, they were using sparkling water to make them, and consequently they lacked the prosecco punch they have in Venice.

Buda Castle from near our Hotel

Right away we both felt that of the 3 cities we had visited on this trip, Budapest was visually the most dramatic and this was confirmed when we returned to claim our room and got a look at the view from our 3^rd floor window. With the cold, I was feeling fairly miserable, but nevertheless we went back out, walked down the Pest bank of the Danube and then cut inland to a delightful little square called Vörösmarty ringed with sidewalk cafes. In Prague there were many restaurants with outdoor seating, but not many cafes like these. Here, like Vienna, like Paris, there was a real cafe culture. Frieda drew 50,000 florints out of an ATM (about $180) and we headed up Attila to Sas Utica where there was a restaurant named Evidens recommended by the driver who'd picked us up at the train station. We sat outside because it was still quite mild at 6 PM. I had some chicken soup for my cold, some paprika chicken and Hungarian beer for the rest of me. Frieda had goulash. It was all quite delicious, even though I had to blow my nose every few bites. I'd taken a Tylenol but it had done nothing to staunch the flow. After dinner we strolled back to Vörösmarty and sat at another cafe that advertised “Homemade Ice Cream.” I ordered chocolate and an espresso. The ice cream was rich, thick and creamy. When we were done we headed down the famous shopping street Vaci Utica, which takes off from the square. It was teeming with stylish young people whose exuberance made me feel better. All in all, everything, the dastardly cold excepted, was delightful. 

Vaci Utica

 

The bed in our room was supremely comfortable but the cold wasn't any better in the morning. Not only that, but Frieda began showing symptoms as well. We had breakfast delivered by room service, then headed for the funicular to Buda Castle. From the National Museum we walked down to the Fisherman's Bastion and the Matthias church. The former offered spectacular views of the Parliament and the rest of Pest, but was jammed with tourists and tourist-parasites. Later in the afternoon we went looking for some ruin pubs, bars that have been built inside dilapidated buildings, the hip thing in Pest. We dropped anchor for beers at one called Anker that sported a large courtyard full of young people hunched over their cellphones. The windows of the 2 upper stories were blown out, twisted ends of rebar left hanging from jagged concrete, which gave the sense of being in a war zone or in some post-apocalyptic environment. We decided not to eat there and instead wandered up a street parallel to the boulevard Andrassy into the theater district where we found a bistro. We both had goulash that didn't measure up to what we'd had at Evidens, but there was a couple from San Jose sitting next to us so we amused ourselves chatting with them. Also it was another lovely, mild evening so we were sitting outside and the theater next door was attracting plenty of elegantly dressed people to ogle. Afterward we returned to Vörösmarty for ice cream and expressos again, and lingered there savoring the enchantment of Budapest. Even at 10 PM the temperature remained mild. But finally we were forced to reluctantly head back to the hotel to get some sleep. We had to get up at 6 to catch our flight back to the States. 

Fishermen's Bastion

 

We both agreed that were we to do the trip over, we would spend more time in Budapest, which seemed the most congenial city of the 3, even though it's a lightweight in the art department. Frieda liked Vienna a bit more than I did, Prague a bit less, but we were both bewitched by Budapest.

Pest

Vienna

Hofburg Palace

We'd planned on buying our tickets to Budapest when we arrived at the train station in Vienna but to our surprise found the huge, sleek, modern station full of Syrian refugees and police. The restroom was jammed with dark young men waiting for a stall to open up while, curiously, the urinals room was completely empty. A few were trying to bathe in the sinks until the woman caretaker came in and scolded them for splashing water on the floor. At the ticket counter the police were shunting refugees and tourists into separate lines. There were several clerks for the latter, only one for the former, so we weren't held up that much but it still took us longer than expected and consequently we were late getting to the apartment on the northeast edge of the Ringstrasse for the meeting with our landlord. Despite failing to notice our text informing him that we were running late, he was still standing out in front of the building as we dragged our luggage up Untere Donau Strasse from the U1 stop at Nestroyplatz (he had sent us detailed directions). The apartment was on the 6^th floor but the building had a lift. It was nearly as big as the one in Prague but was better laid out and furnished cohesively, the walls adorned with Klimt prints. The landlord was charming, answered all our questions and gave us the keys. As it was already late afternoon we asked for a restaurant recommendation and he suggested a place inside the ring called Pachutta. 

Egon Schiele, "Edge of Town"

 

When we arrived there we saw all the locals were wearing jackets and ties so I felt under-dressed. I even wondered for a moment if they would refuse to seat us, but then I noticed some other tourists in attire similar to ours. Looking at the menu we learned that they specialized in a traditional Viennese dish called tafelspitz, consisting of boiled beef with creamed spinach and fried potatoes. The broth from the boiling is served, with vegetables and crepes cut into strings like noodles, as a soup. I was skeptical because boiling did not strike me as a civilized way to treat a good cut of beef, but in conformity with our policy of going native when traveling we went for it and I was pleasantly surprised. It was all exceptionally tasty, even the Austrian Pinot Noir we'd ordered. I'd never heard that Austrian wines were particularly good, but this one was excellent. As I savored it all, a sense of gratitude welled up that I was so fortunate as to have the opportunity to sit in this restaurant halfway around the world enjoying an exotic and delicious cuisine that most people in the States didn't even know existed and might never have the chance to taste. I doubted any of our friends in California had ever even heard of tafelspitz, much less eaten any, yet here I was, loving it.

We slept in the next morning and didn't leave the apartment until 11:30. It was a brilliant day, the sun flashing off the traffic on the Ringstrasse. We bought 2-day Vienna transport tickets and took the ring tram to the Opera, walked past that magnificent building to the statue of Goethe, and then cut through the park to the Albertina museum, which was putting on a special exhibition of Edvard Munch, the Norwegian. We'd seen posters for it, and decided to go through. Of course Munch is terribly gloomy, but he came up with some powerful images to communicate angst, anxiety, loneliness, and his pessimistic perspective, including “The Scream,” which finished the show. Afterward we went to the Cafe Tirolerhof, a stodgy, old-fashioned, snooty place recommended by Rick Steves, but the waiters ignored us, despite our repeatedly making eye contact with them, so we left and went to the nearby Mozart Cafe instead, which had tables available outside in the sun. There we both had coffee and Frieda had a sacher torte while I had apple strudel in vanilla sauce. Both were superb, as was the coffee and the service. “Maybe Steves is losing it,” I said. “Or maybe he's getting payoffs,” Frieda speculated. We decided we should pay less attention to him. 

We Live in Paradise

 

Refreshed, we strolled down to the Hofburg and circled the courtyard to get a sense of the stately majesty of the place. Frieda, who grew up in NYC, was basking in the metropolitan energy. You could feel the grandeur of an imperial capital in those monumental facades. From there we crossed the ring and went through Maria-Theresa-Platz to the Leopold Museum where the Egon Schieles were pulsing with complex, angsty intensity. Really an amazing body of work when you consider the guy died at 28. Afterward we walked down to the Nachmarket and bought some stinky but delicious cheese plus some squid ink pasta to take home. My feet were killing me by then (my little toe was also singing the blues now, along with its neighbor) so we headed for the tram stop. On the way we passed a grocery where we picked up a cooked chicken for dinner and some pastries for breakfast. We stayed in for the evening to rest our feet and plan the next day. 

Hundertwasserhaus

 

In the morning we got to the Hundertwasser museum as it was opening at 10. It was only about a 10-minute walk from our apartment. We both enjoyed it immensely. We bought a print of his painting “We Live in Paradise.” An eccentric, fascinating, amazing guy, superficially crazy but profoundly sane, even though he apparently failed to appreciate the benefits of the Enlightenment. Besides painting, he worked in architecture. His efforts in this field are reminiscent of Antonio Gaudí's work in Barcelona. He was born a couple of years after Gaudí died. The only structure he created in North America is in Napa, so we made a note to go see it. After our visit we had a light lunch of soup and Caesar salad in a cafe across the street from the apartment building he created called the Hundertwasserhaus.

Schonbrunn Palace

 

We then caught the U4 (the metro is sleek and smooth) to Schönbrunn Palace, the Versailles of Vienna. Talk about income inequality! Such an excessive display of wealth (1441 rooms) seems not in the best taste. It becomes crass at some point well short of the point this place reached. But here it was clearly all about 1^st impressions, wowing the yokels. Because the imperial quarters themselves were quite modest, not to mention monumentally dull. Your average middle class home today offers more in terms of comfort and convenience. Even at the time, perhaps the most envied item there may have been the water closet, which was state of the art for its day. I wondered how the emperor would feel about the hoi polloi traipsing through his quarters and looking at his loo. After a quick glance at the vast gardens, we got on the U4 back to Karlsplatz where we caught the D tram to the Belvedere to see the Klimts. The exhibit there was a disappointment, inferior to the one we saw in May at the Neue Gallery in NYC. There were only 4 rooms of Klimts and only the last had any of his mature work, climaxing with “The Kiss.” They did have “The Bride,” which looked as though it could have been amazing, had he finished it. There was a nice garden around the palace, but my feet were again complaining so we headed for the apartment to rest a bit before dinner. Sitting on the couch there I began to feel the telltale tickle in the back of my throat that denotes the onslaught of a cold. I began to wonder if the nasal distress I'd experienced in Prague, which had diminished since we'd left, making me think it had been allergies, had been, in fact, the first onset. About 8 we caught a tram to a restaurant called Huth that claimed to make the best Wiener Schnitzel in town. I don't know about that, but it was certainly the best I'd ever tasted. 

Belvedere Palace

 

There's a lot to see and do in Vienna. It's a big city with big city culture: lots of museums and galleries, a magnificent opera. I loved the Klimt and Schiele, but for me the highlight was Hundertwasser, who was a visionary, an advocate for the reunification of man and nature. Nevertheless, Vienna's a bit stodgy, a bit too pretentious in its stately grandeur and too redolent of the self-worship of the state. All that imperial hoopla, the pomp and circumstance: a little goes a long way for me. I don't mourn the loss of that at all.

Prague

U Glaubicu

For years people have been raving to us about Prague, so it seemed time to czech it out. Frieda also wanted to see Vienna and Budapest, sometimes called “the Paris of the east,” so we embarked on a short trip, just 10 days.

We set off about 11 Friday morning and arrived in Prague around 8:30 Saturday night. Of course we'd lost 9 hours but still, it's an ordeal to get to Europe from California: 24 hours with little if any sleep. The good news was that the core 11-hour flight was on Lufthansa and they take pains to make the flight bearable: TV, movies and meditation videos, meals, snacks, drinks including wine and, after dinner, cognac or Baileys, plus a hot towel to wipe your hands, not to mention pillows and blankets, all included at no extra charge.

 

Our neighborhood

Once in Prague we took a taxi to the apartment we'd rented in Malá Strana on Mostecká near the foot of the Charles Bridge, a pedestrian-only structure lined with statues and with towering gates at either end. Parked out front were several red topless sightseeing cars that looked like they dated from the early 30s with for-hire signs on their windshields. The apartment was on the 3^rd floor. Frieda had thought there was a lift but it turned out to be a walk up and the last flight was steep, with short steps reminiscent of a Mayan pyramid; a struggle with our luggage. Inside, though, it was spacious. The living room, overlooking the street, was so large I felt like I should invite people up from below (there were plenty milling by) and have a party, just to fill it up. But there was no taste on display, no art on the walls. The furniture seemed to have been bought at rummage sales without any design or ruling perspective and scattered at random. A minion of the landlord, who met us there to hand us the keys, suggested a restaurant up the street for dinner. It was called U Glaubicu (just about all the names of everything in Prague are unpronounceable). Frieda felt it was too cool outside so we went in but found all the tables in the front room were filled. Another room with a bar was filled as well. A salon down some stairs was also filled, so we took another flight down to a cellar with vaulted ceilings and there finally found a table. The charming waitress (most everyone spoke English) told us this cellar was over 700 years old, and suggested a meal of pig's knuckle, which turned out to be an intimidating if tasty hunk of meat, with potato dumplings. Frieda had braised beef with bread dumplings. We discovered, over the next few days, that the Czechs are crazy about various joints of pig, and dumplings, which are frequently chopped up. To wash it down we had the famous Pilsner Urquell, which is ok but a little too bitter in the finish for my taste. We got stuffed for a tab of about $30. After dinner we took a walk halfway across the bridge, and then returned to a MiniMart for some supplies. That's when we noticed a display of cannabis chips, cannabis lollipops, cannabis candy bars, and even cannabis vodka on display. WTF! The clerk got strangely irate when I snapped a picture of it, as if it was supposed to be a secret.

Old Town Square

 

Sunday we slept in, had yogurt and croissants for breakfast, and then set off to explore Prague Castle, not that far but uphill all the way. The weather was overcast, a bit chilly. There didn't seem to be anything specific of great interest to see up there: a hodge-podge of palaces in a hodge-podge of architectural styles. Indeed, there is so much architectural variety in Prague that it's an ideal place to have a class on the subject. We circled through the crowds of gawkers back toward our apartment and got some schnitzel for lunch at a touristy place near the base of the bridge before heading off to look for the John Lennon wall, a sort of impromptu, democratic art project near the river that's been ongoing since the 80s. It was colorful if a tad vapid. From there it was a short walk to the Kafka museum which had an amusing animated sculpture out front of 2 men pissing at each other: apparently a pissing contest. Inside, the museum was dark, morose, and gloomy, with a series of texts describing the trials of Franz's life. After our tour we found a cafe nearby to discuss Kafka's depression over spritzes. The spritzes weren't as good as the ones in Venice because here they used sparkling water instead of prosecco, but nevertheless they reminded us of Venice. Like the spritzes, for us, Prague didn't measure up to Venice. “Must an artist suffer to create great art?” Frieda asked. “It's a Judeo-Christian thing,” I said. 

 

U Dvou Srdci

For dinner she made pasta in the apartment, and then we ventured out into the darkness and crossed the illuminated bridge into Old Town. The bridge was choked with tourists, many of them Asians, and all of those armed with cell phones on selfie-sticks. It was also lined with musicians and street performers. A couple of them were playing Brahms on accordions, and Frieda was so impressed with the tightness of their collaboration that she tossed her loose change in their hat (she couldn't figure out what any of the Czech coins were worth and, anyway, none of them were worth very much). Farther along was a trio with 2 violins and a cello (plus some girl beating on a box) playing popular hits. It was fun trying to guess what tune they were rendering so we stopped to listen to 3 or 4 songs. Their enthusiasm and the pop music had drawn a much bigger crowd than the Brahms of the solemn accordionists. In the time we were there they sold half a dozen CDs. There were also a number of beggars on the bridge. We called them supplicants because of the peculiar posture they all adopted, kneeling with their arms stretched out to hold their upside-down hats and their foreheads pressed against the pavement, something like the child's pose in yoga; it gave an impression of total self-abasement that you would never see in the States. Many of them had dogs trained to assume a similar posture. At the end of the bridge is a choke point where you have to cross a narrow street roaring with auto and tram traffic. Amid clumps of singing Czech boys swerving through the crowd on the far side there were many open shops, including one where, seated prominently in the window, a woman was reading a newspaper while her feet dangled in a glass tank of water where a school of small black fish were nibbling her toes. Frieda was grossed out and also chagrined by the fact that there were no shoe stores.

 

Powder Gate

 

Both of us slept badly that night so we got a late start the next day. My nose was clogged and I thought my allergies were acting up. But it was a beautiful, sunny day. We took a tram to the train station to buy tickets to Vienna for 2 days hence. We wanted to make sure we got seats and get the lay of the station. Afterward we walked back through the new town, which looked generic and seedy, to the Powder Gate, the antique entrance to the old town, dating from 1475, and stopped at an outdoor restaurant called Cernovar near the Tourist Information office for some quite delicious smoked pork ribs (pigs must run when they see a Czech coming). Then on to the Mucha museum to see his Art Nouveau posters, which I found just decorative. From there we crossed the cobbled Old Town Square, ringed with a collage of architectural styles, and continued on to the old Jewish quarter, now a home for Rolex, Ferrigamo, and Prada stores. By the time we got back to my favorite cafe below the foot of the bridge for our by now ritual spritzes, my calves were aching from the long walk. I surmised this was due to the uneven surfaces of the ubiquitous cobblestones that force you to continually adjust the angle of your foot. 

Alien Babies

 

We woke up Tuesday feeling we'd sort of done Prague. We liked it, just didn't feel the level of enthusiasm we normally have in Italy or Spain. Something a little too dark and gloomy about it. A bit too medieval and Hogwartsian. Perhaps Prague appeals to Harry Potter fans for that reason, but it lacks the Mediterranean glow that warms my heart. At Frieda's instigation we walked up Nerudova to see the named doorways Maria Theresa had ordered before the days of street addresses, stopping for drinks, then went to a couple gardens, Wallenstein and Vojanovy, both refuges of peace and tranquility with fountains and wandering peacocks. As we were returning from the latter a Czech guy approached us in the street and gave us a sales pitch on a nearby restaurant called U Dvou Srdci (don't ask me to pronounce it). The guy was so charming that he persuaded us to go in. Although not attractive outside, inside it was delightful. We shared some excellent potato soup in a bread bowl and then split a pig knee, also very good. We both had some Budweiser (nothing like the swill of the same name in the States), Frieda light and I dark, and they comped us the best schnapps we had on the trip. Total bill: $28.

 

From there we crossed the Charles Bridge again, walked south past the Neo-Renaissance National Theater, and took a pedestrian bridge to Slovansky Island, a kind of park with paddle boats for rent that resembled the sightseeing cars parked in front of our apartment. Frieda wanted to take a picture of the tubular blue men sculptures sprouting from the river below the Functionalist Manes exhibition hall, or maybe she just wanted to visit the WC. In any case it was another peaceful refuge from the hustle and bustle of the city. After a few minutes rest on a park bench we returned to the National Theater, crossed the bridge back to the west side of the river and walked over to Ujezd to see a sculpture about Communism called Broken Men, rather obvious in its message. On Kampa Island we saw the giant alien baby sculptures, the point of which was not obvious at all. It was here that my 4^th left toe began to pinch. I hobbled on for spritzes at our usual cafe below the bridge and next to the outdoor market. This had become my favorite spot in Prague to sit, have a drink, and people watch. On the way back to the apartment we passed a couple of street performers doing a levitation act before stopping for sausage sandwiches to have with the rest of a bottle of red wine we'd bought the day before. Overall I felt that Prague had its charms, I had no real complaints about it, but I felt no deep affinity for it.

Back to NYC

NYC is, arguably, the capital of the world, at least until Beijing takes over. Our good friends James & Lisa, artist and novelist, respectively, had never been there and were eager to experience it. I, on the other hand, had visited many times and Frieda had grown up there. Consequently, we had for some time entertained the fantasy of going with them and showing them around. So when Lisa recently signed with a NY agent who inked a 2-book deal for her, it gave us the incentive we needed to plan a whirlwind trip.

We took the red eye on Jet Blue Sunday night and arrived early Monday morning. It required an hour and a half to get through the traffic from JFK to the 26^th floor penthouse apartment we'd rented on W. 52^nd. It would've taken longer but the driver knew all the back streets. After checking out the spectacular view, I fell into bed and took a nap. The rest of the crew, too keyed up to sleep, took a taxi to Trader Joe's to buy supplies. When they returned we had a light lunch and then headed over to the Neue Galerie on the east side of the Park near the Guggenheim where James, very much interested in the Vienna Secession and Klimt in particular, wanted to see “The Woman in Gold,” a painting notorious for its history and 2006 purchase price of $152 million, a record at the time. Both he and Lisa were quite taken with this painting, a portrait of Klimt's friend, patron and, perhaps, lover Adele Bloch-Bauer, but there were other Klimt paintings and items of interest as well. It turned out to be a better experience than any of us had anticipated. After the tour we found our way to the Fledermaus Cafe, a recreation of a Viennese cafe of the era in the museum, where I had a Milchkaffee and strudel and James had a Klimttorte and we all discussed our favorite exhibits. 

Refreshed, we took a leisurely stroll across Central Park, past Cleopatra's Needle, to the West Side and, as Lisa is a Beatles fan, Strawberry Fields. The weather was overcast and cool but at least dry. The Dakota, where Yoko still lives, was sheathed in scaffolding, apparently undergoing some maintenance, perhaps a facade scrubbing.

 

Tuesday Frieda brought pastries up from a little shop downstairs and then we headed off to the MOMA where we went directly up to the 5^th floor to see all the heavy hitters. It was awesome to see so many major masterpieces of modern art, paintings seen dozens of times in art books over the years, now right in front of you in all their life-sized immediacy. An item like “Starry Night,” for example, which you're used to seeing the size of a playing card, is suddenly a yard square, with the frenzied brushstrokes still roiling the surface. In another room one of Monet's “Water Lilies” paintings 7 feet high sprawled 42 feet along one wall, so gigantic you felt you could just walk into it and get lost. There were stunning works by Picasso like “Seated Bather” and “Girl in a Mirror,” and the mesmerizing 7 by 10 foot “Dream” by Henri Rousseau. And then there were provocative works by artists not so famous, like James Ensor's “Masks Confronting Death.” Altogether a dazzling surfeit of riches. I kept running from one to another like a kid in a candy shop, unable to impose any order on my viewing. When I got to the end and ran into Frieda she said she'd had the same problem, so we went back through in the opposite direction pointing out things that maybe the other had missed. After finding James & Lisa we all went down to the 4^th floor where the more contemporary stuff was. After the 5^th, it seemed a bit vapid, as if all the exploration we had seen on the 5^th had left the Western imagination exhausted, there was nowhere else interesting to go other than novelty for its own sake and the tedium of shock. Or maybe it was just we who were burned out, like after tasting a lot of wine your palate goes stale and you just can't tell what's good and what isn't anymore. 

  We walked down 5^th Avenue past St. Patrick's Cathedral to Rockefeller Center, stopping at a street vendor for a knish along the way. Then we headed for Grand Central, stopping again for pizza at Brother's on 46^th between 5^th and 6^th where they sold 2 slices and a soda for $2.99. At Grand Central we had a devil of a time trying to get a cab: there were plenty of them but they were all occupied. After almost resorting to Uber we finally found one to take us to the Folk Art museum which was showing a number of outsider artists, including Joe Coleman and Adolf Wolfi. From there we walked down Columbus past Lincoln Center to our apartment. 

After some relaxed conversation over champagne about our day, we set off for Becco's in the theater district where we had a reservation at 7:30. It was good we did as the place was jammed, even though it was Tuesday, and the food was exceptional. Afterward we went next door to Don't Tell Mama for drinks and some informal cabaret. I had an excellent vodka stinger, a charming after-dinner cocktail that put me in a good mood, but Frieda found the main singer's voice annoyingly nasal. Also, Lisa was starting to come down with a cold, so we left earlier than I would've chosen to.

 

In the morning James & Lisa headed off to see Lisa's agent while Frieda and I walked to a restaurant in the Time Warner Building called Landmarc for the most amazing pain perdu I'd ever had: deliciously moist and eggy on the inside, crisp and sweet on the outside. It was marvelous. Her nephew's wife had turned her on to it on her last visit. Downstairs at Whole Foods we got some Petit Suisse, a yogurt-like cheese treat common in Europe but hard to find in California, even at Whole Foods there, and after dropping it off in the refrigerator at the apartment, grabbed a cab to go meet James & Lisa. We picked them up near the Flatiron Building and had the driver drop us all at Washington Square Park. The plan was to amble through the West Village to Chelsea Market and the High Line, but the women got too chilled by the wind whipping down Greenwich Avenue so we cut the walking tour short and caught a cab home. After talking things over, James & Lisa headed for the Met, which was on their list. We, on the other hand, were tiring of museums and it seemed to be warming up so we strolled along Central Park West some distance and then cut over to Broadway where, eventually, Frieda found a cafe she remembered atop the Fairway Market. Burgers were decent there and I had a milk shake to compensate for the great one I had earlier intended to get at the dairy store in Chelsea Market. Then we walked over to the Magnolia bakery to get some cupcakes, a favorite treat of her nephew's wife. We were planning on having dinner at their place and thought that would make a nice dessert.

James & Lisa got back to the apartment shortly after we did and, after an appropriate exchange of information about our respective afternoons, we all walked over to the nephew's place on 61st. After dinner James & Lisa headed back to the apartment while Freida and I strolled up 52nd to a Cuban cafe called Victor's where we had the best mojitos we'd ever tasted. We had 2 apiece and only stopped because the place was closing. 

 

Thursday we went up on the roof where you could look in the opposite direction from the view we were used to in our apartment, toward the Hudson. We would have had lunch up there but it was too cold to stay. After pastrami sandwiches from Artie's deli, we packed our bags. The car picked us up at 3 and took 2 hours to get through horrendous traffic to JFK airport. Every time I go to NYC, or anywhere else, actually, that I've been before, the traffic seems worse than the last time. The world seems quite noticeably now to be filling up with more and more people, moment to moment. 

Good Mornin' Y'All

Jackson Square

Frieda and I spent the MLK weekend in New Orleans. She'd been there a couple times during her college years but it was new to me. I'd avoided the deep south to that point. But Tennessee Williams said the US has only 3 cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans, all the rest are Cleveland. So I felt obliged to check it out while avoiding the craziness of Mardi Gras.

We arrived Thursday night around 7 and cabbed to our B&B on the northwest edge of the French Quarter. Our greeter, who seemed a bit lit, warned us not to cross nearby Rampart, which separates the Quarter from the Treme district, or venture onto Bourbon Street after dark, stipulations that made me a bit apprehensive, but hunger inspired me to lead the charge into the crepuscular streets in search of the restaurant, called Eat, where we had an 8 o'clock reservation. It was only a couple blocks away. From Frommer's we knew it lacked a liquor license so we picked up a six pack of Stella at a tiny grocery on the way. It turned out to be a small, quiet place tucked into a corner with a friendly waiter who, for no corkage fee, gave us cold glasses and stashed the rest of our beer in the fridge until we were ready for it. We shared some gumbo and slow-cooked pork with collard greens, a delicious introduction to New Orleans cuisine. On the way back to our B&B we encountered a parade of bicycles, including some bike rickshaws, all decorated with neon glow sticks and meandering through the nighttime streets to the accompaniment of music and shouts of “Happy Thursday!” Every night's a party, apparently, in New Orleans.

 

Royal Street

Our host brought us warm croissants in the morning and then we set about exploring the Quarter in earnest. Our B&B was on St. Ann and following it southeast into the glare of warm morning sunshine took us right past Jackson Square to the banks of the mighty Mississippi. A long line had already formed at nearby Cafe du Monde for beignets but the croissants had pardoned us, allowing us instead to take in the river views before circling back to the church end of the square and listening to a brass band that had set up to play dixieland. A small crowd had formed and a couple of people were dancing by themselves. Already it was clear that New Orleans was about food and music (possibly also parties and parades), and maybe liquor, as I suspected those solitary dancers might have already had a tipple or two. In fact, as I looked around I noticed more than one person with a suspicious plastic cup in hand, despite the early hour. Not to be outdone, we ducked into a bar adjacent to the square where I tried a Pimm's Cup and Frieda had a Bloody Mary. Fortified, we started walking again, wandering the quieter, northeast end of the Quarter the rest of the morning, acquainting ourselves with it. When we eventually did get peckish we headed southwest for Johnny's on St. Louis and stood in line for a couple po'boys. I had roast beef and Frieda had shrimp. Both were exceptional. Thus prepared, we ventured onto Bourbon Street for the first time which, in the early afternoon, was tacky but innocuous. The sound of live music drew us into a bar called Fat Catz where The Daywalkers were playing. They had a washboard player who really tore it up so we had a couple of beers and listened for a while. 

 

Early in the evening we strolled over to Frenchmen Street, in the Faubourg Marigny, a district adjacent to the Quarter on the northeast side. Unlike California where anyplace with live music charges a cover, here there were many live music venues that were free or at most had a one-drink minimum. We stopped in a place called Bamboula's and listened to Chance Bushman's Rythmn Stompers. Every so often Chance would jump up and start tap-dancing on a little square of flooring he'd brought along for the purpose. When we tired of that we wandered down the street to The Spotted Cat, a well-known music venue, but there were too many people smoking inside and I wasn't used to that as it's been illegal for years in California, so I didn't want to stay, even though we had some good seats at the bar. Frieda got a bit annoyed as she wanted to hang there, but I led her back up the street to a place called BMC where Big Al and the Heavyweights were playing and it turned out they had an amazing harmonica player who reconciled her to the change of venue, so we ordered drinks and stayed for an hour or more, while the band never took a break. But then they started inviting people from the audience to come up on stage and play tambourine or washboard and it got a little cacophonous and chaotic so we bailed. We threaded our way down Decatur past all the panhandlers and lowlifes to get back to the Quarter. I needed a break from the crowds and craziness so we ducked into Pere Antoine's on Royal, which was nearly empty at that point, for some gumbo. While we were there a number of parade floats inexplicably slid by. New Orleans does seem to love a parade. By the time we got back to Cafe du Monde the line had evaporated, and so we finally had the famous beignets, a square donut smothered in powdered sugar that has become emblematic of the city (every park bench has a dusting of white powder on the pavement in front of it).

Street Musician

 

Saturday morning we headed for Canal St., the southwest border of the Quarter. Beyond Canal you're out of the Quarter and into a city that could be Cleveland. There we caught the St. Charles streetcar that runs past Emeril's restaurant to the Garden District, the old American Quarter, full of ostentatious mansions, including Anne Rice's old place. It was a spacious and somnolent contrast to the crowded and vivacious Quarter. We wandered around on a guidebook tour, ending up at a cemetery with white above-ground tombs, then rode a packed streetcar back to the Quarter. Frieda bought some beads on Bourbon Street (the town was already gearing up for Mardi Gras although it was still a month away) and I bought her a t-shirt at Preservation Hall (which does charge a $20 cover).

For dinner we had reservations at Vacherie, a sister restaurant of Eat. We ordered crawfish cornbread, broiled oysters, and breaded pork chops with collard greens, plus a bottle of Malbec. Our food was a long time coming. The waiter apologized and offered us free drinks by way of compensation, so we ordered Sazeracs, a signature cocktail of New Orleans that we hadn't tried yet. We weren't that crazy about them but of course couldn't let them go to waste. The food, however, when it finally showed up, was excellent, and between the Sazeracs and the Malbec we got fairly loaded. So, even though it was after dark, we defied the warnings and headed for Bourbon Street where we found people who made us feel sober. I saw a guy who looked like a zombie shuffling down the street. There were guys pulling down their pants and mooning the crowd, there were gals in nothing but their underwear, it was a crazy scene. But it wasn't threatening. A few people bumped into me and politely apologized. Everyone seemed in a good mood, no one was belligerent. For a while we just stood aside at an intersection and watched bemusedly as the besotted parade flowed by.

Backstreet

Sunday morning things were more sedate, although the line at Cafe du Monde was outrageous. The weather held to sunny and warm. We roamed the French Market buying t-shirts and trinkets for friends. We had brunch reservations at Sylvain where the food and the Bloody Marys were excellent but it was crowded and we were seated between 2 large, noisy parties. The rest of the afternoon we just wandered around in search of nooks and crannies of the Quarter we hadn't explored yet. In the evening we returned to The Spotted Cat to see Kristina Morales and the Bayou Shufflers. The place looked a lot better in old episodes of Treme, where the front wall is paned windows. Now it's just raw plywood, and the furniture looks like it was rescued from a dumpster. Kristina Morales had a powerful voice, but the band didn't generate the excitement of the ones we'd seen on Friday. We left before the first set was over and went down the street to Bamboula's where a guy was playing who looked and sounded like B. B. King. We were getting hungry but there were no seats available so we ordered Margaritas, stationed ourselves in a central position, and scanned for likely departures. It was looking pretty hopeless when a stranger came out of the restroom and asked if we wanted a table, he and his wife were leaving. Naturally we were delighted as he led us to a table right in front of the stage. We ordered pulled-pork sandwiches which were delicious. We stayed for a while after finishing them but again the band, although good, didn't wow us like the bands we'd seen on Friday so we carried forward the guy's favor by offering our table to a threesome of women who seemed, if anything, even more grateful than we had been, and then again negotiated the gauntlet of beggars and homeless folks on Decatur Street to get to Cafe du Monde for a dessert of beignets and coffee.

French Market

 

Monday morning, MLK day, the Quarter seemed almost deserted as we took our last circuit, returning to Johnny's for po'boys to take with us to the airport. Before leaving we finally ventured across Rampart into Louis Armstrong Park which in the daylight seemed perfectly safe and actually rather nice. We circled around past Congo Square, credited with being the birthplace of jazz, and saw a Mardi Gras Indian in full regalia standing by a van. We waved farewell to him before hailing a taxi and heading out. So long New Orleans!

The French Quarter certainly had a novelty appeal to me. It's charming, quaint, amusing, unique, and worth a visit. But I wouldn't want to live there. For one thing, superstition and religion play too prominent a role in New Orleans cultural heritage, not to mention the after-aroma of slavery. Of the 3 American cities, I'd pick San Francisco as the most congenial and beautiful. Frieda found New Orleans a bit more sympatico than I did. She said she could live there for a year. I don't think I could last that long. But we may go back for another visit.