new canon- the gentrification narrative.

first, i apologize for being so late on posting this blog. it's been one of those weekends.
having grown up in nyc, there were so many red flags, blaring alarms, lightbulbs exploding, etc etc going off in my head while reading this. but, because i know the point of these discussions isn't to rant about how irritating or unlikeable a text/voice is, i will refrain and attempt to mold my criticisms into something useful, nuanced.  i have to first say that this narrative is like the graphic memoir accompaniment to the show girls, also about young, educated transplants living in new york city sloughing through daily existential crises, carting themselves throughout brooklyn and downtown manhattan, just trying to figure it all out, make art, and avoid work that requires too much energy output. both feel like the anti-coming-of-age narrative to me: we don't wanna grow up because it means we have to be real people and like have a job narrative. some sick hipster peter pan twist or something, with an interlude of "it's a hard knock life." anyway.

my first notes after reading the first few pages of this was "what is at stake?"(for these characters, in terms of plot, for the narrative, etc). i was wondering about the narrative arc and timeline of it. we kinda just jump right into the middle of gabrielle's life. there isn't much of an introduction to characters or setting up of scene, we're just right there, close to gabrielle, as she tries to write with tom staying in her apartment.

while reading this text, i was thinking SOOO much about the "urban" narrative and the way place is represented and mapped throughout the three sections of lucky. i almost wonder if this kind of story can be categorized as a narrative of gentrification. to me, it kinda feels like what this is, and that there is a literary lineage this book falls into that can also be defined as that. i'm thinking about the centrality of place in this text. what is the significance of nyc (brooklyn, greenwich village, the bronx) as the backdrop of this story? in a way, it's hard to parse exactly the significance because the location seems kind of secondary and uncomplicated. there's not much context around how/why the characters we meet are in nyc or if there's some sort of level of complication to their presence there (historical context?). this is why i think it fits within a canon of gentrification narratives. there is an underlying assumption threaded throughout the text: we don't need to know or ask why these young white liberal types are in nyc because it's a given: nyc is a progressive hub where young white artists from all over go to escape suburbia/oberlin college/etc so that they may be creative and interesting, do something crazy, get a taste of the city that never sleeps, find cheap rent and scramble by in brooklyn, and then have their art break out onto a scene (located in nyc even though these semi-place-based arts/narratives are kinda ones of privileged displacement). this is a common representation of the life of the artist in nyc.

we are dropped off in new york city. brooklyn. williamsburg to be exact-- bedford ave, what we would now know as the hipster hub of nyc. havemeyer st., the L train, cafes, bookstores, boutiques, mccarren park. little loft apartments everywhere. we spill into areas like bushwick and greenpoint, which in 2003, were beginning to be gentrified (call gabrielle's friends that she visits there the pioneers of that spill-over). tom is looking at apartments on the upper west side and in greenwich village, areas that, for native new yorkers who have been living in nyc for decades, are virtually untouchable in terms of affordability. (we get the one mention that the building in greenwich used to be an 'irish tenement,' which i think is really interesting... it's the one mention of the history behind the area... a poor, working class, immigrant history that is essentially unknown now due to the stark demographical shifts in residence. and also, is greenwich village alluded to at all as a hub for the lgbtq community? no. that's confusing...).

there are other interesting things going on around representation and affiliation in this text. it's clear to me that the characters in this text are privileged in a number of ways: race, class, sexuality, and in terms of movement. they have the ability to keep moving from apt to apt, putting down security deposits, not having steady work (where the f does their money come from?), getting jobs as art assistants, etc. somehow, throughout all their travel through nyc during the whole book, we never happen to come in contact with any people of color or people of other classes until page 74 and 108. on 74, a bum with intense stink lines is lying on a subway seat. and on 108, we're in the big scary bronx that no one wants to go to in a classroom full of students of color where gabrielle does more like "crowd control" than actual teaching. nice. upsetting. oh and we also somehow only come into contact with lgbtq people when gabrielle is at that weird performance art event where she talks about butches and femmes in "QUOTATION MARKS." but, so these are the identity markers of these central characters: gabrielle, tom, her friends, her roommates, and this is the way they see others in their world: the peripheral hobos, the rowdy brown and black kids they teach in neighborhoods they don't wanna go to, the "butches" and "femmes" and their really compelling, fascinating art. what i think is interesting on the affiliation front is that these characters, though class privileged, white, straight, and from elsewhere, refuse to affiliate or align with the trust fund babies at nyu who are also questionably existing in nyc without context, with expendable income coming seemingly from nowhere, etc. it pointed to an interesting aspect of perceived classlessness and lack of desire to place yourself within privileged circles (and take on the identity of "hipster") which is soooo alive and well in nyc (and in other rapidly-gentrified cities-- dc, baltimore, oakland, sf, asheville, milwaukee, philly, etc ON & ON & ON).

so, i guess there's something (disturbingly) genuine about this identity-based (and it is identity-based, it's not neutral), urban narrative? because however troubling seeing nyc through the lens of this subjectivity is, it is pretty accurate? i kept wondering how interesting it was that in a post-9/11 (really recently post, too, we're talking 2003), we don't see any of that reality reflected in the comings and goings of these people. it's like they aren't existing in the same city as so many other new yorkers who were going under severe surveillance just for being brown and carrying a backpack. or for having any sort of voiced political feeling at all. this was the advent of IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING and subway searches, patriot act raging, nypd going insane, a lot of extreme, unexplained disappearances of muslim or perceived muslim  nyc residents, insane anti-immigrant stuff, the RNC about to happen in nyc in 2004, etc etc.

i don't know. these are my scattered thoughts and attempts to show that there is a specificity to this type of place-based, city, artist narrative. and gentrification has a lot to do with it, whiteness does as well, lack of affiliation also, mapping, etc.