I have never been to New York but I think it’s safe to assume that the city as portrayed in this lively collection of short stories is very different from when it was first published in 1986.
As Tama Janowitz said in a recent interview, in the 80s it was still possible to buy or rent a relatively cheap terraced house (brownstone) in the centre and communities of struggling artists were commonplace; now these same properties sell for millions and the ragged bohemian culture has been forced out.
Nowadays, she says : “On every block [there] is Starbucks, Banana Republic, The Gap …… it’s changed in such a homogenous, universal way”.
It will also be obvious to any modern reader that the equivalent NYC hipsters would, these days, be jabbering on cellphones or glued to their tablets. A scene in which a woman dare not leave her apartment for fear of missing a call reads as a quaint slice of modern history – is this really how they/we used to live?
But although the setting and details are dated, the ambitions and attitudes of the characters are still recognisable – after all, cities and technology change more rapidly than people do.
The opening line of the first story, Modern Saint #271 is designed to grab the reader’s attention: “After I became a prostitute, I had to deal with penises of every imaginable shape and size”.
This leads you to expect a raunchy, no holds barred collection of stories but Janowitz is out to provide breezy entertainment and lively distraction rather than to shock or challenge.
‘Engagements’ is the story I liked most because I like the way it captures the dilemma of a young woman who wants a settled home and relationship but fears being trapped by one, or both. It also seems more of a self-contained tale whereas most of the others are open-ended character studies, a selection of inconclusive snapshots.
Janowitz is good at creating vivid scenes with snappy dialogue but plots are not her strong point. Many of the characters reappear in different stories but there’s no real linear narrative to follow.
At various points we learn of the slowly disintegrating relationship between Eleanor and Stash, follow the luckless Marley as he tries to raise funds to paint a fresco in Rome and there are sporadic encounters with a manic and destructive cat called Snowball.
Janowitz makes wry observations about how people get into and out of relationships, how they fret about not fitting in or worry about not finding a way to express (and profit from) their creative impulses.
Straight jobs are viewed with terror, as you can tell from this passage from Life In The Pre-Cambrain Era : “On the streets people were staggering this way and that, newly released from their office tombs. Grim faces, worn down like the cobblestones, never to make anything of their lives.”
This is the life of ‘slavery’ that everyone wants to escape from. Even those who are doing mundane jobs to pay the bills think of themselves as artists just biding time until the ever elusive big break comes.
The desperation and paranoia that underpins these lives is present but Janowitz skips over it in a fairly humorous manner. Eleanor says at one point: “I only know two kinds of people, these days: those who used to take drugs and stopped, and those who still do”.
The author’s real life friendship with Andy Warhol must have given her plenty of material for these streetwise stories and, even though there are many eccentric personalities, they never seem exaggerated for effect.
Ar the same time, there’s a superficiality about the stories that is frustrating if you want deeper insights into the lifestyles depicted. Nevertheless, I think we are reading are authentic, accurate details of characters who don’t truly know themselves or where they are going. Who does?
