A city made my writers

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Peter Florence in the introduction to Rites of Spring: New Writing From London:

"New York looks like it does in the movies. London doesn't really. It's a city made by writers, and the strongest images and imaginings of the capital are fashioned in tales conjured by novelists, diarists and playwrights."

Do you agree?
Would Edith Wharton or Cadance Bushnell? Would Mike Leigh or Guy Ritchie?

― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 15:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, this is why Mary's quest is doomed.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 15:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes. Songwriters too, I think.

― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 15:36 (twenty-three years ago)

London is a city made by good writers and lousy films. Being an outsider to New York all I know of it is the movies and TV, but I'd be surprised if it really was like that if you lived there.

I think its a simplistic thing to say by someone trying to big up his collection of WRITING about LONDON.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 16:54 (twenty-three years ago)

But Pete when you visit NYC as an outsider it does look / feel like you're in a huge, weirdly familiar movie set. And when you visit London it doesn't. This *may* have something to do with plain quantity of course.

― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 16:56 (twenty-three years ago)

That thread title typo nearly made my brain explode!

I get the sense that contemporary New York writers always shy away from writing about "the" city in an effort to write about "my" city, (which can itself be pretty symbolic of New York or the U.S. in general).

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:22 (twenty-three years ago)

The great London novel is a slippery and illusive thing (much like the GAN) but it is an aim that many a London writer has thanks to Dickens.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:25 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, I only noticed the typo when it was too late to do anything. I do apologise.

― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Do any of you who write feel where you live or grew up is something that influences you? I mean it obviously does but is it something you can detect or even use.

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, very much so.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes.

(Don't worry, Anna, it's just that I was imagining you like Saruman from Lord of the Rings, standing over the city in a tall black tower while the streets are rent in twain by the birth of your all-powerful legion of writers.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:39 (twenty-three years ago)

That is so near the truth it's not even funny.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:42 (twenty-three years ago)

Anna: "The world of men is ENDED!!"
*Orcs cheer*
Anna: "I bought another hat!!"
*Orcs cheer some more*

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:57 (twenty-three years ago)

That has made me laugh so much I'm crying now.

― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 23:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark S is a brute.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 23:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I think it's the best thing ever written about me on the internet.

― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 23:48 (twenty-three years ago)

*More Orc cheering*

― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 23:49 (twenty-three years ago)

think it's the best thing ever written about me on the internet.

What about this?

http://promo.kissclients.com/kissclients/londonjobs/img/pics.jpg

[I was cropped out of that photo, fact fans]

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 23:58 (twenty-three years ago)

You can click on that photo btw.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 23:59 (twenty-three years ago)

That was probably v.mean.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 00:01 (twenty-three years ago)

It's so fun to catch things before they get deleted. Now Anna seems like the world's coolest Real World character.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 04:52 (twenty-three years ago)

(But hopefully there won't be deletion, cause that's great!)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 04:54 (twenty-three years ago)

Even cooler! And now I imagine Kelis being impressed by her orc armies.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 04:56 (twenty-three years ago)

(By the way Ned, can you figure out what the hell I'm talking about and let me know when I'm finished drinking?)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 05:16 (twenty-three years ago)

You wine-soaked sot, you wastrel.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 05:24 (twenty-three years ago)

I like Dawn Powell's descriptions about N.Y. during the 30s, 40s, adnd 50s. I almost think that her representations of the appearance and culture are more accurate (or at least addressing more than one or two class levels) than Edith Wharton's writings.

In regards to Britian, having never been there in person, when I think of it my mental images are from basic photographs, Monty Python skits (at least the one about Olympic Hide and Seek), movies, and books. So I see Big Ben, the Thames, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, whatever that address is where Tony Blair lives - 9 Dowling Street?, and so forth - I've no "all encompassing" sense of the shape or feeling of the city.

― LCD (Ms Laura), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 05:36 (twenty-three years ago)

> Do any of you who write feel where you live or grew up is something that influences you? I mean it obviously does but is it something you can detect or even use.

Yep - I was born and raised in rural mountains of Northern California. I can definitely see how that has influced my writing, from settings (I stick with what I am most familair with) to characters (rural, innocent, backward natives contrasted with the influx of "city dwellers" who moved to the area fter the '89 Quake) to plot lines (again, stories that I have grown-up hearing, though manipulated to a point where I don't know that they are recognizably related to the original.) I think that most everything I write at least starts from that area of settings, characters, and plot lines but then it evolves, through the re-writes, and moves further and further from that original portrayal.

― LCD (Ms Laura), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 05:40 (twenty-three years ago)

that Anna bio is wonderful

― M Matos (M Matos), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 06:55 (twenty-three years ago)

I like the way nabitsuh felt the need to post in parenthesis up there.

(*More orc cheers*)

[For Anna, obv.]

― Cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:22 (twenty-three years ago)

I feel I have to put that into context. It's for a careers thing on Kiss 100, so it's written for 15-17 year olds and I'm not normally that perky.

― Anna (Anna), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Can we go back to the original question?

― Anna (Anna), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry Anna.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:42 (twenty-three years ago)

So who are the novelists, diarist and playwrights who have made London then? Yes Dickens, yes Pepys but then who?

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:46 (twenty-three years ago)

That's all. That's why tourism is wrapped in a quaint heritage shell.

Anyone who says Martin Amis is oaf.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:54 (twenty-three years ago)

(Damn you baited my oaf trap Nick.)

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:54 (twenty-three years ago)

The next portion of the paragraph:

"In the great story map of London, Shakespeare's Southwark and Dicken's East End inform and boarder Amisland in W10, Hanif Kreishi's Suburbia, Timothy Mo's Soho, Iain Sinclair's Thames, Nick Hornby's Highbury, and JG Ballard's dual carriageways heading west."

― Anna (Anna), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:41 (twenty-three years ago)

The problem with the concept of London being a city made by writers, as NY is made by filmmakers, is that not many people have actually read said books. Dickens' London people kind of know about even if they haven't read it first hand. Mo, Kureshi, Sinclair and Ballard - I don't think so. What does Peter Florence mean by 'strongest'. Just most powerful to him (who knows London)?

The more I think about it, the more I think it's a poor comparison. It's true that London isn't strongly represented in movies (Mary Poppins is prob. the image most Americans have) but I don't really think books fill their place.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Mary Poppins has a better handle on London than, say, Sliding Doors

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Possibly because the most direct image you get of a city is exactly that - an image. Films deal in images, books by and large deal more with mood and sensation (and usually don't bother with the accents).

Shakespeare's Southwark is bollock as well, when did he write about it?

And yet again I disagree with you completely Ed. Sliding Doors' middle class London is one an awful lot of people live in. The problem is that people think a film/book should try and encompass every aspect of the city - not just the slice with the characters in it.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe he was thinking about the bit at the beginning of Olivier's Henry V.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:00 (twenty-three years ago)

New York is a city where they demolish the past to erect the future. London is a city where the future grows up around and in the crevices between chunks of the past.

NYC looks so much like the movies because it was MADE BY the movies. Everyone thinks of those amazing modernist Skyscrapers like the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building when they think of NYC. Funny thing is that Fritz Lang visited NYC quite early on, and was struck by the ship coming into NY harbour and seeing all those old Beaux Arts skyscrapers with their classical temple tops, he was struck by a vision of a modern city and made Metropolis. Architects saw all those amazing art deco modernist skyscrapers in the film, and abandonned Beaux Arts to start making art deco modernist skyscrapers.

So, people think that the film Metropolis is based on the modernist skyscrapers of NYC, when really, no, the buildings are built in homage to the film.

Wow, I did learn *something* at the Cooper Union...

― kate, Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Sliding Doors' portrayal of London life is pretty good but its handle on geography was shocking and the image of London that it gave as a result felt false.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:07 (twenty-three years ago)

But Kate the Manhattan skyline looks very classic and 'of a time' to me. Esp. now the twin towers have gone. All that steel and glass. Would they really get away with knocking it down now?

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:09 (twenty-three years ago)

I would say something, but I'd get arrested as a terrorist sympathiser if I did...

― kate, Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:12 (twenty-three years ago)

The bits of NYC which seemed surprisingly familiar when I went for the first time last year weren't the skyscrapers (or the skyline) but the streets and alleyways, and things like fire escapes.

My London was made by Smash Hits ('79-82), Shena Mackay, Smiley Culture and "The Boy Looked At Johnny".

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Sliding Doors was a fantasy* so strict adherence to A-Z not necessary (and you try and get the permits to film).

*Proved by parallel universe plot and woman fancying a man who quotes Monty Python.

London has had demolished solidly in the past, but often to no great plan - and most successfully by outsiders (Paternoster Sqaure lives to be demolished over and over).

(Nick - hasn't someone already got away with knocking part of it down?)

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:13 (twenty-three years ago)

i love that "turns corner out of the strand into notting hill gate" thing which all london films have

(where is the bridge of prostitutes in mona lisa btw)

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Round the back of Kings Cross on Goodsway, possibly being demolished/heavily upgraded at the moment for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Another thought - so much of Central NYC looks alike (For the record, I'm talking about the bits of Manhattan that most visitors experience here) - fire escapes in Soho look just like fire escapes in midtown, and skyscraper canyons look the same no matter where. If you want to view any kind of of diversity, you have to go to the Burrahs.

So much of central/touristy London looks very different from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. City of London looks totally different from Oxford St, looks totally different from Camden. If you want to view any kind of homogenity, you have to go out to the Burrahs to see miles and miles of identical Victorian terraces.

― kate, Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:30 (twenty-three years ago)

that's where i thought, but i often used to take shortcuts through there — for LEGITIMATE NON-WHORE RELATED REASONS — and it doesn't look a bit like that... where exactly is/was the bridge bit?

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:30 (twenty-three years ago)

Kate you are right and Tim too about the alleyways and fire escapes. Even more than the skyscrapers they are what give Manhattan its homogenous (and settled) feel. Like I say, I don't see much demolishing to make way for the future (except from terrorists, yes).

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm pretty sure it was the bit round the back of Kings Cross on the road one down from Bagleys which also has the canal right by it., Though now you're making me less sure.

I will search this out for you, and may even start a seperate thread in which we build London out of films.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:42 (twenty-three years ago)

YES!! building london is U&K

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Some of them are just going to fall down soon anyway from neglect. See the UN Building... why hasn't there been any upkeep on it, so the windows are falling out? Oh yeah, the US doesn't pay its dues, whoops. When that falls down due to neglect, who do you think is going to get blamed for it? The US or some random terrorist group?

OK, there's my name on a "to watch" list now.

― kate, Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:44 (twenty-three years ago)

i thought ted turner picked up the tab?

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 14:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Did he? It must have been after I left. It always used to scare me cause I lived across the river from it and we could see when the windows fell out and stuff.

― kate, Wednesday, 15 January 2003 17:42 (twenty-three years ago)

An interesting suggestion of what impression Americans have of London comes from the many superhero comics set in modern London. Obviously comic writers eschew research, and instead seem to vaguely recollect a Sherlock Holmes movie they saw once, then make the rest up. We apparantly have mainly cobbled streets, lit by gas lamps and bounded by mostly thatched cottages in which live cockneys saying things like "It's a right pea-souper tonight, bloke!" to each other. London's leading hospital is a fairly large wooden shed-like structure in a forest. Nothing happens more than 200 yards from Trafalgar Square and/or Big Ben.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 21:27 (twenty-three years ago)

And?

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 21:53 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, it is pretty much like that.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 23:12 (twenty-three years ago)

You've shattered my crystal palace, Martin.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 16 January 2003 02:11 (twenty-three years ago)

There was a good Spider-Man story set in Liverpool a few years back too. Liverpool is a fishing village full of cockneys. At least it's more modern than Edinburgh (see old Claremont-Byrne X-Men comics), where the natives carry flaming torches at night.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:07 (twenty-three years ago)

seven months pass...

Where is Hanif Kureishi's Suburbia?

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 05:53 (twenty-two years ago)

JG Ballard 'Burning World' described this summer pretty accurately. Hopefully 'Drowned World' will come soon. I'd love to sit on my 7th floor balcony, with a worm on a hook, skimming coconuts. Re 'High Rise' - just wondering, what do ppl think is a 'reasonable' (geographical) comfort zone for living, like how close to home should you be entitled to feel safe? See, the lift is five feet away from my front door, and when I called it up yesterday, when it opened about 10 glue sniffers pimp-rolled out, spitting and being surly. And I thought, that's the final fuckin' straw, I've gotta leave this fucking shithole. They've been doing it in the stairwells all year, fine, but right on my doorstep? Fuck this shit. Sorry, I'm going off on one here.

― dave q, Tuesday, 2 September 2003 07:26 (twenty-two years ago)

HK's suburbia = Bromley, no? (Hence roman a clef refs to Billy Idol in the 'Buddha of Suburbia' and The Dame warbling on the soundtrack).

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 2 September 2003 07:54 (twenty-two years ago)

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