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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Pete Hamill says:
“The New York version of nostalgia is not simply about lost buildings or their presence in the youth of the individuals who lived with them. It involves an almost fatalistic acceptance of the permanent presence of loss. Nothing will ever stay the same. Tuesday turns into Wednesday and something valuable is behind you forever. An ‘is’ has become a ‘was.’ Whatever you have lost, you will not get is back; not that much-loved brother, not that ball club, not that splendid bar, not that place where you once went dancing with the person you later married. Irreversible change happens so often in New York that the experience affects character itself. New York toughens its people against sentimentality by allowing the truer emotion of nostalgia. Sentimentality is always about a lie. Nostalgia is about real things gone. Nobody truly mourns a lie.”
Pete Hamill is one of the reasons I became a writer. I read his work (newspaper columns, the novel “Flesh and Blood") in my teens and was inspired by the blue collar lyricism. The above quote is from his latest book, “Downtown: My Manhattan.” A must-read...from where I sit.
For the scoop on the book from where his publisher sits, please click on “more” below.
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