Misguided

Last month, I spent a couple of weeks on holiday in the States with frankie_ecap. Needless to say, this was not without controversy (sorry if you can't this, these are locked posts!).

I like travel – I like exploring new places, I like going back to places I know and wandering about; and this time, we were in New York, a city I know better than any other city I haven't lived in, I would – I get to visit New York every couple of years, staying with friends. (This trip will undoubtedly get written about sometime, but experience shows me it might take a year or two... - not least cos I have about seven hundred photographs to process first!)

I went to New York in October 2002 – a year after 11 September 2001 (you're smart, you'll have noticed that...) - then (I think) in 2005 and again in June 2007. In 2002, I avoided “Ground Zero" - it felt too raw: there were shrines all over the city, remembering firefighters who were missing, there were posters all over the place with details of missing workers from the World Trade Center, and tattered flags all over the city, left out in all weathers as a sign of defiance.

In 2007, I did go to the site of the WTC, because I was doing stuff in the surrounding area and it seemed churlish to go out of my way to avoid it; it was a chilling, moving experience.

So I do react to the events of 11 September. So far, so good.

Thing is, this trip I had a guide book with me. Indeed, I had several: new guides to Washington (earlier in the trip) and Philadelphia (later); and two to New York: one, the Time Out guide, dating from 2007, the other, the Lonely Planet, from (I think) 1997.

I like guide books: they are just that – guides. I have used the Lonely Planet guide many times – I have several editions, going back to the 1980s. I like the layout, the way they work, the feel - the very vibe of the book.

It is, though, a guide book. I know it is old, but I am adult, I can cope with that: the world changes, jazz clubs and restaurants close and open; and the guide book is a way to help me navigate the city. Not infallible, obviously, and used with caution – because neither the guide nor me – nor the city – are immortal.

I also took bus and subway maps, kindly provided by Manhattan Transportation Authority - if you're ever in New York, stop by a subway station and pick up a free bus map: the best map of the city you can get, free. The maps I had I think dated back to my 1997 trip, too – I think they were from 1993 and 1995 respectively.

The age of the Lonely Planet guide and subway and bus maps didn't bother me. Some things had changed – the World Trade Center, for instance – restaurants opened and closed, neighbourhoods moved up market or down; perhaps some changes to the subway, maybe different routes on some buses.

frankie_ecap saw it a bit differently, of course. This is partly because she used my subway map to plan a trip on the only bit of the network that had significantly changed: in the midtown area, one of the routes had been renamed, and, had she relied on my map, she'd have ended up somewhere she didn't want to be. Still she had the wherewithal to check her route on a subway map in the station, and she saw that the old map was wrong, and avoided getting lost. Still, it was my fault for lending her my map... She found ALL the changes on the bus map, too, sifting through it route by route, highlighting how it might have got her lost (had she wanted to take every bus in Manhattan...)!

She then extended this argument to the guide book itself.

When we'd arrived in New York, we went for a long walk, and sought food near where we were staying; I looked at my decade-old guide book and suggested a local diner, and steered us right there. So the one time we relied on the guide book, it worked – it came good when it needed to.

However, frankie_ecap felt that simply using a guide book that discussed the World Trade Center as a tourist attraction – since it was a tourist attraction when it was written – was somehow wrong: disrespectful to the dead, to the city, to the past; a sacrilegious act.

This became a major point of contention, as if by using my old, friendly, workable guide book I was doing great wrong.

Thing is, I know the city had changed: like everyone else, I saw the tv footage. I know something historical happened; but that doesn't change the whole city: I know the context. And I can live with that:it is a guide, not an instruction manual¹. The world had changed, the time of the guide book is different from now, but the guide still holds, by and large.

For me, knowing there is hole in the book wasn't a problem; knowing there was a hole in the ground, the result of some murdering terrorists was the problem. That the book reminded me of that actually seemed right: an act of rememberance, for how the city – the people and the place – used to be.

¹I was going to write “not a map..." but thought this might be counterproductive...

You Can Judge A Book...

Whilst I am discussing life and debate with frankie_ecap, she has been surprised and amazed by my attitude and behaviour regarding books.

We have an ongoing discussion about the value of book covers. I often decide to buy books by authors I don't know – I like trying new things, experimenting, seeing a different view.

Thing is, when I walk into a bookshop to browse, I have no way of working out which books by new authors I will actually enjoy. There are thousands of books by thousands of authors in many, many genres, and I can't sample them all – I have no way of deciding which I might want to try.

Except their covers. Their covers are full of information: the cover illustration (might) indicate something about the content; the publisher might have a reputation; the front or back might carry reviews or testimonials by people I trust or know to distrust.

So in the absence of any other information, I will look at the cover, pick up a book, investigate it a bit... I do a bit of work, but it will be the cover that first attracts me.

The analogy I use is that of going to a party where I don't know anyone else: rather than standing dumb in the corner, I would go and talk to someone; and that someone must have something to attract me – maybe they look interesting, or they are talking animatedly or they're wearing a low-cut dress - but in the absence of other knowledge, there will be something to attract me to talk to them. Once talking – or flicking through the pages of a book I'm considering – I can reassess my original view: I'll have more information on which to form an opinion.

But first impressions do count.

Getting Out of Sequence...

Elsewhere in my little book-enclosed universe, frankie_ecap and coughingbear and, apparently, many others have been surprised by my attitude to book series.

I have just read Jasper Fforde's “The Well of Lost Plots”. I was reaing it out of sequence: I had read “The Eyre Affair” before, and picked up the Well of Lost Plots because my brother had a duplicate and I had just finished a rather hard going novel set in post-revolutionary Siberia. (If I hadn't known the author a while back – well, twenty five years ago – I might have given up.) I needed light relief, and I knew that Jasper Fforde would entertain and revive me.

I wasn't wrong. I really enjoyed the book, reading it quickly, and laughing a lot.

So frankie_ecap and coughingbear were very surprised - shocked, even - that I had no wish to immediately read the prequel and sequels to it.

There are many reasons for this. Mostly, it comes down to my liking variety, I think. I go out of my way to vary the books I read – I tend to follow a novel by a work of non-fiction and if not, I will not read a book of one genre and immediately pick up a book of the same genre: instead, I will go out of my way to read a completely different work, to mix it up, to broaden rather than limit my experience.

I think I do the same in lots of different ways: what I cook, what I watch when I go to the movies (though I now go so infrequently that it isn't really apparent), what music I will listen to both live and recorded (though this is mediated much more by mood and feeling, and what is available on the radio, too).

There is also something about not using up the resource: if I like a book or its author, I will “save” the sequel or similar work until I know I will appreciate it, a bit like building up credit to get the most out of the experience. By relishing the diversity of books, I appreciate them more.