In the introduction to her short story collection Ghosts, Edith Wharton wrote that the titular subjects of her compilation “require two conditions abhorrent to the modern mind: silence and continuity” to become present in the corporeal world. These elements seem to be all the more imperiled amid our fragmented hyper-mediated age.
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With the emergence of a worrisome new COVID-19 variant, nightmarish climate forecasts, and the full embrace of unscientific and undemocratic thinking by a substantive percentage of the American voting public, this Christmas season feels more emotionally challenging than last year. “Normal” life resembles a distant memory more than an object just in sight.
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Earlier this autumn, I visited Providence, Rhode Island for a long-awaited trip to the John Hay Library at Brown University. For a full workweek, I spent the majority of my waking hours sifting through the papers of author H.P. Lovecraft and several of his associates for material for my biography on the weird fiction writer and his New York City years. As with any research project, a new question arose for each one answered.
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A few months ago when the country appeared to be moving away from pandemic life (or, at least, could realistically hope for such a transition in the foreseeable future), I began to re-introduce myself to New York City. Losing myself in a bookstore. Relaxing outside a cafe. Even braving a sparsely attended movie. After living in cities all my adult life, I found myself needing to learn how to be an urbanite again — the expected aftershock following a year and many months of effective hibernation.
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By the summer of 1925, weird tale author H.P. Lovecraft was souring on his New York experiment. He was living in a boarding house in Brooklyn. He was robbed of nearly all his clothes. His wife was living in another city. He was barely writing. Still, he managed to enjoy his summer.
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Another Town on the Hudson 