Stories From The City
Stories from the city
In Our Time recently had a great two-part episode on the history of the city, charting the economic and political rise of cities from Ur to Bogota. Some of the information was familiar, and some quite unexpected. For example, after the fall of Rome heavily populated cities became a minority, and London didn’t reach first-century Roman population levels until the beginning of the 19th century. The political architecture of 18th century cities was illuminative – Hausmann’s wide boulevards were designed as much to prevent rebellious working classes from erecting barricades as they were for aesthetic reasons. The earliest ‘gated communities’ were the Georgian townhouses of 18th-century London and Dublin, where the mews at the back gave access to carriages, so that their inhabitants need never step on to the main street outside and encounter any of the ordinary inhabitants of the city. But cities were often reclaimed by the very people who they were designed to control – New Delhi was designed with Hausmann-esque boulevards after the Indian Rebellion of the 1850s in a concentrated effort to consolidate imperial power, however after independence in 1947 Lutyens’ architecture was celebrated and the city accepted as a key part of India’s history. Similar accomodations with the symbols of past conquest have occured in Dublin and Kingston. And there’s no doubt that a dense concentration of people, while often leading to poverty and disease, is a significant factor in the development of revolutionary ideals and a vision of a fairer society for all – Engels’ Manchester and early 20th century Paris and Moscow being key examples. Part of the second programme focused on the astonishing effect the development of the railways had on British cities, particularly London. One commentator referred to the light-speed adoption of railway travel as the equivalent of an ‘atomic age’ and the analogy is not exxagerated – within 30 years London and Paris had evolved from cities which relied on horse-drawn carriages to ones with mass under- and overground transit systems. This had the effect of finally bringing the rich into almost direct contact with the poor masses, as the engraving above by Dore reveals. Bridges ran directly over slum tenements, leaving the passengers in no doubt as to the conditions the inhabitants lived in. Many poor people were evicted from their homes without compensation in the early days of the railways, yet ironically it was the social mixture and opportunities for mobility brought about by those same railways that later helped increase employment opportunities, and subesequently, aspiration. Modern cities were analysed too, with a fascinating parallel drawn between the development of Los Angeles as a car city in the 1930s and its imitation by South American new cities like Mexico and Bogota. One contributor broke past the usual cliches about the relentless ugliness of modern cities – an argument that has been pitched against all new building since probably the days of Ur – and described how run-down slums in Bogota have evolved into respectable neighbourhoods after the introduction of good public transport. He seemed to be siding with the unfashionable but hopeful view that regeneration is always possible where people are concentrated together, even in desperate slums, and it is good planning, support and an understanding that millions in the developing world would rather live in cities than in the country that are needed to improve cities, not hand-wringing over their lack of beauty. Human life is messy and complex, therefore our cities are too, but that’s no excuse for neglect and doom-mongering. I would have liked more analysis of the cultural life of cities, and the greatest city of all, New York, was barely touched upon, but overall the series was extraordinarily comprehensive and informative. Above all, the history of cities is the history of humanity, a story in equal parts unequal, cruel, thrilling and wonderful. As Velutus says in Shakespeare’s Corialunus: ‘What is the city but the people?’ Listen to In Our Time: Cities here.
More Posts from Slenderfire-blog and Others
John not into chicks in this January 1966 issue of Fabulous magazine.
Naturally I googled the photoshoot...
The face and sleeves of a man who does not want to be doing this at all 😄❤️🐥🐥
The Threepenny Opera
Image: Dada Rundschau by Hannah Höch, 1919.
(A review from last year of the Threepenny Opera in the Gate Theatre. Trying to get this post to nestle into the correct chronological space, but Tumblr seems to have a problem with that kind of reverse-scheduling. Hence this introductory note - this review was written in October 2013.)
Seeing the show in the flesh, in the theatre, after years of exposure to the myth, is a slightly disorientating experience. The expected, stunning musical set-pieces are interspersed with narrative-prolonging longeurs, while the most famous songs (Mack The Knife and Pirate Jenny) pop up at rather incidental points in the story. The political message is less a message than an announcement, clunking the audience over the head with the complaints of the oppressed in rags. The show itself, as presented by The Gate and directed by Wayne Jordan, is both less strange and more wonderful than I’d imagined it would be. This is a production that takes the source material seriously, as shown by the 18-piece orchestra that starts playing as soon as the curtain lifts. From then on the show dazzles with pitch-perfect (and refreshingly unamplified) singing, choreography that manages to be challenging without being confusing and costumes and set design that convey just the right amount of ragged decadence.
The lack of subtlety and nuance in the original storytelling persists through a game reimagining by Mark O’Rowe, but the music and aesthetic for which the name Threepenny Opera is synonymous more than compensates. Allusions to the present economic situation are kept mercifully subtle. This production is no exercise in superficial window-dressing – it is the very sincerity with which the cast and crew present this musical and visual feast that gives this production its extraordinary power.
Highlights include Hilda Fay as Jenny, Mark O’Regan as Mr Beecham and the aforementioned 18-piece orchestra.
New fic: Under his carpet
Under his carpet: Linda Eastman McCartney reflects on the ups and downs her marriage to Paul in a series of snapshots between 1968 and 1990. Chapter 1 of 5 posted.
Plinda fans/Paul superfans dni (JOKING! No sugarcoating, but not a hatchet job on either. Most of it is based on fact, but plenty is invented - speculative fiction an' all that.)
While not shying away from the darker sides of the marriage, this story is primarily intended as a character study about flawed individuals, none of whom are villains. It also explores the tension between visually appearing liberated, as many Boomer women did, and the reality of their domestic lives. A tension which is still relevant today.
In December 1964, Dusty Springfield toured to South Africa. She was horrified by apartheid, so her contract specified that she would only play to non-segregated audiences (the same tactic the Beatles had used in the American South earlier that year). It didn’t go well: South African officials came to her hotel pressuring her to sign a declaration that she would only play to segregated audiences, making veiled threats that it would be dangerous for her to go outside.
After several performances, she was deported. The South African government announced: “Miss Springfield was on two occasions warned, through her manager, to observe our South African way of life in regard to entertainment, and was informed that if she failed to do so she would have to leave the country. She chose to defy the Government and was accordingly allowed to remain in the country for a limited time only.”
The Beatles’ Ringo Starr was one of many to rush to her defence, saying “Good for Dusty. I would have done the same thing. It’s stupid to have segregated audiences, especially as the music came from the Negroes in the first place.”
“Negro” sounds dated now, but in 1964 it would be the most respectful term to use (it was Martin Luther King’s preferred wording). Beatle biographers tend to leave Ringo out of political discussion, so it’s interesting to see him weighing in - particularly the way he takes the opportunity to emphasise who created rock’n’roll.
Sharon Davis, Dusty: An intimate portrait of Dusty Springfield, 2008
everytime I read this story I'm so disturbed by yoko's manic participation, like she was 38 at this point. girl what are you doing with this mean girl baby nonsense you're nearly forty.
Sugar Street
My Goodreads review of Sugar Street, the third in the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (Black Swan edition, translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Angele Botros Samaan)
Two main things struck me while I read Sugar Street: firstly that while I don't know Arabic, I got a strong sense of the elegant economy and poetry of the written language from this translation. The second thing was how much traditional Egyptian middle-class life in the 1920s and 30s as depicted in the book reminded me of Irish culture up until relatively recently. While on the surface there wouldn't seem to be many similarities, the conservative, family-focused, deeply religious patriarchy in which mothers dominated the home felt very familiar. Even the way religion infused the language and thinking of the characters, even the nonbelieving ones, was very like the way Irish culture was for much of the 20th century a Catholic culture. Like in Ireland, families observed religion, gossiped about neighbours, argued about the politics of a young nation and mothers hoped for a civil service career for their sons and a good marriage for their daughters.
The story covers a long period of time and is a little episodic - there were many subplots that could have been explored more, and some main plots that could have been trimmed. I had limited patience for Kamal's endless romantic vacillating, but was engaged by his nephew Ahmad's adventures working for a Marxist magazine and trying to break free of the constraints of traditional middle-class life.
Politics runs through the story constantly, as the characters debate and wonder where the new country will go once the double-crossing English are finally gone. It might be advisable to have a wikipedia entry on pre-war Egyptian history open as you read as the various parties and individuals are mentioned without backstory (and there's no reason why they should be, considering the novel was written first for an Egyptian audience.)
Some writing and Beatlemania. The phrase 'slender fire' is a translation of a line in Fragment 31, the remains of a poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho
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