The C train grinds on

Everyone complains about the New York subway system, but when your very own neighborhood line has just been voted the worst line on the whole system, you can complain with extra authority.

There is the telltale wheeze, then an ominous rattle. And then the C train, that least loved of New York City subway lines, rumbles sadly into the station, its faded tin-can siding a dreary reminder to passengers of an earlier subterranean era.

I was a little surprised that the C was found to be the worst line. Not the much-reviled G? Not the murky, dun-colored J, M, and Z? And not the F line, which is so crammed during rush hour that I will walk blocks out of my way to take the C instead?

I’m actually somewhat fond of the C. It stops only a couple of blocks from my apartment. It takes me almost everywhere I want to go—except on weekends, when it’s rerouted along the F line from Jay Street to West Fourth. And when I’m waiting at Canal Street while three E trains and two As go by, I feel a certain glow when the C finally grinds into view.

Others like it too, and its antiquated R32 cars.

Some riders relish the retro feel of the R32, its dim taupe interiors, old-fashioned roll signs, and an unusual front window that allows an unobstructed view of the track.

Time, however, has taken a toll. This week, the Straphangers’ Campaign released its rankings of the city’s subway lines, and for the third year in a row, the C ranked dead last.

The survey found that C trains break down three times as often as the average subway car, arrive only once every 10 minutes at peak periods, and have the least understandable announcements in the system.

But in its day, it was the bomb.

Opinion was not always so negative on the R32s. Mr. Greller, the historian, said that when they made their debut, the shiny Brightliners were warmly welcomed by riders accustomed to ugly, drab subway cars. Stainless steel, at the time, was a well-received novelty.

“People were impressed,” he said, citing the original robin’s-egg blue interior and aquamarine seats. “Rail fans love the R32s. They are very pleased they are not going to replace them.”

(Photo is from the New York Post version of the story.)

The Explosion of the Radiator Hose

The Explosion of the Radiator Hose is actually the second book I’ve read about an ill-fated attempt to move a car across Africa. In Malaria Dreams, Stuart Stevens and a former fashion model drive a Land Rover from the Central African Republic northward to Europe. In this book, the narrator, who if we follow Proust and “give the narrator the same name as the author of this book” we may call Jean Rolin, sets out to drive an Audi from France to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The book is well reviewed by Emma Garman at Words Without Borders (where I blog from time to time). My only quibble with her review is that she describes it as “ostensibly a travelogue that I assume has been partially fictionalized/embellished.” In fact (at least in its English edition) it appears under the marketing-friendly rubic “a novel.” But as you read it, it is impossible not to conclude that it is mostly a travelogue or memoir.

I expected Explosion to be entertaining but a little shallow, as so many road books are. The first line promises comic disasters: “When the radiator hose burst, the car had done exactly nine-nine thousand four hundred meters, since its odometer was reset to zero.”

Rolin’s reaction to this setback makes you suspect at once that he doesn’t know much about the Congo. Rather than finding some duct tape and sheet metal (or better yet, having brought some with him) he sends his partner Patrice to a nearby village to look for an Audi dealership. Not surprisingly, Patrice doesn’t find one.

First impressions are deceptive in this case. Rolin knows his Proust and his W.G. Sebald (an essential guide to the boundary of fact and fiction), and he spent much of his youth in the Congo. Peppered throughout this little book of 162 pages are asides that convey more knowledge of Central Africa than you will find in some authors’ entire tomes. Stranded in his car as night falls, page 12 finds him worrying about what will happen to him, but in a world-historical context.

Among the images of torture and humiliation that now presented themselves for my consideration, one stood out from all the others, for its detail and historical importance alike. The scene is from the personal Calvary of Patrice Lumumba, the ephemeral president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the months immediately following its birth: of all the heroes of African independence, Lumumba is arguably the only one to have retained his heroic status, as much for the circumstances of his demise as for the brevity of his reign (slightly less than three months), even though the latter bore the stain of a handful of massacres carried out under his authority, mostly against members of the Luba tribe, in the province of Kasai.

Here in a single sentence we get not only a quick précis of the career of Patrice Lumumba but a more evenhanded one than you will find in some full-length works. 

Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

I’ve been curious for a while about the work of my near-namesake Geoff Dyer, and recently checked out a copy of his fat compendium Otherwise Known as the Human Condition.

The book is divided into sections called Visuals, Verbals, Musicals, Variables, and Personals. I am usually a dutiful book reader, making my way through collections like this in the order the author and publisher have seen fit to present them. But in this case I guessed that more than a hundred pages of art criticism might be a wearisome way to begin, and that I might do better to find out something about the author before trusting his judgment on photographs, books, and music.

So I started at the back, with Personals, which turned out to be a good way to do it. I was pleased to read about Dyer’s childhood devotion to comic books and model airplanes, and his early-adulthood devotion to sex, drugs, and the dole. And I was pleased to find out that the title essay is not a ponderous piece on the meaning of life but is mostly devoted to the author’s quest for the perfect New York City doughnut-and-cappuccino combination. (The ultimate doughnuts, it seems, are manufactured by the Doughnut Plant, whose website—by Bluefuse Design—is animated and annoyingly high-bandwidth, and was probably expensive, but which does inform you that their doughnuts are available at Dean & Deluca, Zabars, Citarella, Joe’s Art of Coffee, Oren’s Daily Roast, and Agata & Valentina.)

This background helps the reader approach Dyer’s works of criticism with enjoyment but a little less reverence than one might otherwise bring. The best of these, I think, are the literary pieces collected in Verbals, and I particularly appreciated Dyer’s enthusiasm for Ryszard Kapuscinski.

His books may be rooted in his own experience, but they are full of amazing digressions, little essays—in Imperium—on how to make cognac, on the history of the Armenian book, on anything and everything. And yet these digressions are always integral to the conception of the work. In his nomadic life he has described real places—like the city of crates in Angola in the famous opening of Another Day of Life—that are as fantastical as Calvino’s invisible cities.

I reviewed Another Day of Life when it came out in 1987, but it would never occur to me to think that anything about it was famous. Linking it to Invisible Cities, one of my famous books, makes this tribute even better. 

Help a good magazine get born

Words Without Borders, the nice folks who have let me blog about African literature (mostly) on their website for the last two years, publish an online magazine and an increasingly impressive line of anthologies. I was lucky enough to attend a benefit reading from one of these, The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.

The next issue of Words Without Borders will cover contemporary writing from Afghanistan. As this is the country where we’ve been fighting a war for almost a decade (remember?) it’s well worth knowing more about, and if WWB’s track record is any indication, they will do a great job.

To help make it happen, visit WWB’s Kickstarter page. Even a $10 pledge will get you a Words Without Borders shot glass, and WWB’s undying gratitude.

P.S. Attentive readers will note that I thought at first that WWB was raising money for an Afghanistan anthology. Nope, it’s a new issue of the Words Without Borders magazine, and equally deserving of support.

Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou

There are certain books that I’ve had on the shelves for years and still haven’t gotten around to reading. In some cases (The Hour of Our Death, The Graves Are Not Yet Full, Escape from Sobibor) it’s because the subject matter is a little ... heavy.

In other cases, as with my hardcover copy of A Suitable Boy, the book itself is too heavy. When I’m reading a book, I like to carry it around with me until it’s done. In fact, much of my reading is done while clinging to a pole on the C train. With certain books, like A Suitable Boy, this is awkward to do, and with others, like The Satanic Verses, it seems inadvisable.

I did finally accept the challenge of hauling around A Suitable Boy until I had finished reading it, and was glad I did. But I thought it would be a long time, maybe forever, before I read Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, the massive and beautifully produced volume created to accompany an ambitious museum exhibit mounted by UCLA’s Fowler Museum in 1995.

It turns out that the Christmas break is the perfect time to read this book. I have blocks of time to devote to it, and especially since a blizzard dumped 20 inches of snow on the city, no reason to go anywhere. Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou looks like a coffee-table book, and in fact it would be well worth having just to go through the photos and their captions. There are numerous images of vodou flags, sequined bottles, paintings, sculptures, and complete vodou altars from Brooklyn to West Africa to Haiti itself. But there are also in-depth essays by many authorities on Haitian vodou, including Karen McCarthy Brown, Laënnec Hurbon, and Donald Cosentino, the editor of the book.

I have a long-standing interest in Haiti, and in 1996 I traveled there on a vodou-oriented tour organized by Global Exchange. Halfway through this book I was regretting that I never got to see the exhibit it’s based on. Then I realized that I did see it. This was the same show that appeared at the American Museum of Natural History from October 1998 to January 1999, and that I made a special trip from Cambridge to see (about a year and half before Jenn and I moved to New York.)

The museum still has pages on its website devoted to the show, and for anyone who wants to plunge into the book and isn’t already familiar with the difference between the rada and petwo rites and the various manifestations of Ezili and Ogou, they make a useful introduction.