Yuletide
  • Yuletide blog
  • About Me
  • Links
  • List of All Posts

Post-172: In New York City (Part VI, The Ghost of Sherman McCoy)

12/26/2013

0 Comments

 
Previous Post: Part V, "Under the Christmas Tree Like It's 1999"
A Manhattan street scene:
Picture
.
Read More
Notice that most people are stylishly dressed (except the dark man in blue). Typical Manhattan, I guess.

Another stylish thing to do is to buy Apple products, of course. In front of the enormous underground Apple Store, we saw yet another group of people recording some video footage. Look in the center rear of this photo:
Picture
A closer angle:
Picture
For a TV show? For a movie? A commercial?

Even Manhattan's unexpectedly-elegant cathedrals, as below, seem lifted from a movie (a European movie, even):
Picture
Protestant Episcopal church (a cathedral, really), Manhattan
Sherman McCoy (of Park Avenue), in the novel Bonfire of the Vanities, described attending one of these Protestant churches. He sent his daughter to its daycare program. I read it in 2013 (bought in a used bookstore in Itaewon, Seoul).

I couldn't help but think of that novel frequently, strolling around "White Manhattan" (as author Tom Wolfe calls it).

Picture
Bonfire of the Vanities is a tragedy. It comes to pass that everybody calls for Sherman McCoy's blood. (It may as well have been, "Crucify him!!") A multi-ethnic feeding frenzy. The various antagonists' "vanity" lead each to pile-on poor ol' Sherman, for all different reasons. All are united, but only to the extent that Get The Wasp!  can unify. Sherman's entire world falls apart. Nearly everyone deserts him. He ends up in the prison system for a crime he didn't commit.

Bonfire of the Vanities is a clear allegory, as I read it, for the dispossession of the once-dominant WASPs of New York City (Wolfe usually renders the word as 'Wasp'). Sherman McCoy represents WASP-New-York, or WASP-America. Wolfe makes clear, in the novel, that their 'dispossession' is partly their own fault, as Sherman is a flawed man, too.

Walking around Manhattan in the 2010s, one sees of ethnic assertiveness all around. From all groups, it really seems, except any White-Protestants. Just like in Sherman McCoy's universe, they are a group disallowed from collective identity, only defined in negative terms!

One could be forgiven for thinking there are no "WASPs" left.


Are there any WASPs left in NYC?

The 2010 Census has it that
Manhattan is 48% White Non-Hispanic, a rate that been steady for decades. Manhattan is probably only 5-10% White-Protestant [Whites of at-least-nominal Protestant affiliation/background). (Wiki says Manhattan is 20% Jewish alone; there must be at least an equal number of White-Catholics there, and 48-20-20=8).

This low 'WASP'-share must rise substantially in certain neighborhoods, including ol' Sherman's Park Avenue. Likewise, it must plummet in the "outer boroughs" of today (except Staten Island, where my mother went to college many years ago). I see that New York City as a whole, all boroughs, is down to 33% White today, of which a large share are Jewish, and so on. NYC as a whole is probably <5% WASP, then.

M
y friend T.A. (from Kazakhstan) described to meriding subway trains in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx and his surprise at the trains being bereft of a single stereotypical 'White-American' face.

Bonfire of the Vanities is a brilliant novel. I'd call it the Great American Novel. It seems to me that it catches the quintessence of what today's USA, as I have know it, is all about. It was written around the time of my birth.

Next Post: Part VII, Modern Art
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    About

    Welcome. This is a place I write things that may or may not be of interest. Thanks.

    See here for more.


    Search this site:

    List of All Posts
    List of all posts
    Subscribe via email:

    Subscribe to the Feed:

    Enter email address to subscribe to daily updates:



    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013


    Contact by Email
    Yuletide5142 at y@hoo.com


    Picture
    Me

    I thank you for
    stopping by
    this quiet corner
    of the Internet.

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.