Two Massive Tomes

My sister Lydia usually reads several books at a time.  I may have a book of poetry on my coffeetable that I'll read to break up a long novel or book, but I usually just concentrate on one book, preferring to lose myself in that one world and give it my full attention.

For a change, though, I decided to tackle both the 1200+-page history Gotham by Burrows and Wallace, and the 800+-page novel NewYork by Edward Rutherfurd.  I'm coordinating the chapters by date, i.e., I'll read the history of New York through a certain date, and then the novel through that same time span.  It's easy to link the two because Rutherfurd's chapters are subtitled by date, and the massive history can easily be stopped when I reach the stopping end of an era, so to speak.  Gotham ends in 1898, while the novel takes us through the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center.

What's interesting about doing the reading this way is seeing how the novelist makes the historical record come alive (although Gotham wasn't his only source).  We care about these characters.  What made one man or woman a Loyalist and others Patriots?  The fictional characters interact with historical ones like Ben Franklin and George Washington.

We follow several families through the generations, with certain talismans being passed down from one to the next.  The most poignant thread was that of the wampum belt, which we encounter toward the beginning of the novel, and which ends up being worn (and disintegrates) during the World Trade Center attacks.

Burrows and Wallace's writing, although like a textbook, is not dry.  The biggest difficulty I had with it was the weight of the book itself - how to hold it without making dents in my legs or ending up with aching wrists! 

I discovered many facts about New York City that were unknown to me before this reading, such as the fact that NYC was one of the largest slaveholding sites, fighting long and hard against abolition, and that NYC was our first capitol.  Of great interest to me was reading about the history of the publishing industry, how it began and evolved.  The footnotes were as interesting as the text - here's a sample, regarding the sewing industry:

"Singer introduced a family machine in 1856.  Home sales were sluggish at first, until Singer offered them at half price to ministers' wives and to sewing societies connected with churches, after which sales to "respectable" women picked up. . ."

The Draft Riots of 1863 detail the lynching and burning of blacks.  This is but one of the horrifyingly violent episodes in NYC's history, and one of Rutherford's characters, whose family we've come to care about, is a victim of this horror.

There's so much here - women's history, mercantile history, wars and battles and greed and generosity, writers and artists, plagues and inventions, common sense and blindness.  As I love the intensity, excitement, bustle and uniqueness of our most exciting city, it was a pleasure to discover its history.  I was touched that Rutherfurd ended his novel shortly after one of his characters visits Strawberry Fields, and then finds out that a Freedom Tower is to be erected at Ground Zero.  His character says: 

"That Strawberry Fields garden he'd come from, and the Freedom Tower he'd been thinking of:  taken together, didn't they contain the two words that said it all about this city, the two words that really mattered?  It seemed to him that they did.  Two words:  the one an invitation, the other an ideal, an adventure, a necessity.  'Imagine' said the garden.  'Freedom' said the tower.  Imagine freedom.  That was the spirit, the message of this city he loved."

It was an interesting experiment on my part, tackling these two books this way, and I'm glad I did it.  I'd recommend this method to anyone, but you may want to purchase a lapdesk first. . .