City on Fire (125 page)
Authors: Garth Risk Hallberg
There was still a narrow strip of real estate along the bed’s edge, I’m remembering, on the far side of Cate. He squatted to untie his own shoes and then stretched out on his side there, gingerly, as if we were about to wake up at any minute and tell him he had to go. And just then I thought of a story he’d told me when I was nine or ten, when I asked if he actually believed in God. The story was about Cate’s birth; at first I couldn’t see the connection. But everything had slowed down in the final stages before the crowning, he said, and the doctors who came periodically into the waiting room seemed concerned. One mentioned a surgical option, if something didn’t change in the next minutes. You were exhausted, I think, and they were concerned a labor this long could put the baby into distress. “I wasn’t sure if I did or didn’t believe,” Dad said, “but when that doctor left, I went into the bathroom and bolted myself into a stall and got down on my knees on the floor anyway.” Did he ever tell you this? The prayer was, characteristically, a kind of trade. “Let this baby be okay, and let Regan be okay, and I will give up caring about anything else.”
God, questions of existence aside, apparently held up His end of the contract, but I think now that Dad, for years afterward, had been feeling himself to be more or less in breach. I’m not making excuses, understand. Just saying I can sympathize. But then, would God really be a God who asked him to give up caring—who wanted everything? Maybe what Dad had learned the night of the blackout was that in fact he didn’t care about anything else, at least not in the same way he cared about me and Cate. And you. The way I think he still does care. I know, at least, that as I pretended to sleep that morning, I could feel him lying stiffly on his side, trying to feel his way back to the people who were right there, breathing.
And now here I am myself in much the same position, in this too-nice apartment on West Sixteenth Street. Groping. Feeling, as the sun comes up over the pavement outside. I’m imagining myself in the Galerie Bruno Augenblick, in some third space, watching through a slit in the wall as Dad reads these words, and you do. I’m trying to figure out what I want them to say here, where the tide of type has washed farthest up the walls, before the white starts to eat away at it again and the whole fucking thing dwindles away to a nothing that’s either meaningless or not. Or no; I’m imagining all of us here, in this third place, together. It’s a private space, or private-ish, but one finally big enough to leave room for other people. Dad’s there, and Julia, and Cate and Mercer and Samantha and the Prophet Charlie. And you’re there in the dark right next to me, Mom, your hand in my hand. Waiting for the end. Knowing each other as we do, we probably wouldn’t need to say anything out loud. But I guess what I would want to leave each of you with finally—tender some Evidence of, against a life’s worth of signs to the contrary—comes down simply to this: You are infinite. I see you. You are not alone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book is a shared labor. Grateful acknowledgment for this one goes first to Diana Tejerina Miller, its editor, and to Chris Parris-Lamb, its agent.
Huge thanks also to their colleagues: Andy Kifer, Rebecca Gardner, Will Roberts, and all at the Gernert Company; Maggie Hinders, Chip Kidd, Paul Bogaards, Nicholas Latimer, Maggie Southard, Amy Ryan, Lydia Buechler, Andrew Miller, Carol Carson, Andy Hughes, Roméo Enriquez, Oliver Munday, Loriel Oliver, Betsy Sallee, Robin Desser, LuAnn Walther, Sonny Mehta, and all at Knopf; U.K. editor Alex Bowler, Joe Pickering, and the team at Cape.
Further support and inspiration came from: Naomi Lebowitz, the Insight Lady of St. Louis; the faculty of Washington University; Brian Morton; and all at NYU/CWP; the New York Foundation for the Arts; Matthew Elblonk; Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Sylvie Rabineau; C. Max Magee and The Millions; early readers Buzz Poole, Janice Clark, Jordan Alport, Fridolin Schley, and Jürgen Christian Kill; Gary Sernovitz, Ron Hibshoosh, and the New York Public Library (especially David Smith and Jay Barksdale) for a measure of factual footing; Patti Smith, Lou Reed, the Clash, Springsteen, the Who, Talking Heads, Fugazi; Woodley Road ’96 (D.T., M.M., Walker Lambert, Chris Eichler, Barton Seaver, Nuria Ferrer, Daron Carreiro, Kevin Mullin, the Sports); MDG; NYC; Vicki and Claude Kennedy; Bill and Christy Hallberg; Rachel Coley; Amos and Walter Hallberg.
Finally, and always, the deepest debt is to Elise White.
ON SOURCES
Paige Harbert and Derek Teslik graciously gave permission for the remixing of elements (images, editorial choices, two guest columns, and a trip to the diner) from their respective ’zines, Firefly Cupboard and Helter Skelter, themselves works of folk art whose tributaries reach back as far as the Yippies. Though misapprehensions and outright fantasies are attributable to Richard Groskoph and his author, “The Fireworkers, Part 1” is studded with bits of pyrotechnic detail, lore, taxonomy, mise-en-scène, and bibliana taken from Fireworks, George Plimpton’s beautiful book on the subject. In particular, Richard’s three paragraphs on the manufacture of a “bomb” lean heavily on Plimpton’s reporting. The images on pages 295 and 751 appeared in Fireworks, too. Several background incidents and a line of dialogue in Book VII were reported in Blackout, by James Goodman. Though the text of the novel draws on too many books, songs, films, and people to name here, Ken Auletta’s The Streets Were Paved with Gold, Jonathan Mahler’s Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, Legs McNeil’s and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me, Philip Gourevitch’s A Cold Case, Joan Didion’s “Sentimental Journeys,” and the anthologies New York Calling (Marshall Berman and Brian Berger, eds.), and Up Is Up, but So Is Down (Brandon Stosuy, ed.) were among the key resources—as were, in a different vein, Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach and Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind. The zen koan is a condensation of one quoted in Hofstadter. Some slight mishearing or forgetting may inflect the quotations of song lyrics in this novel; certain Scriptural passages depart subtly from extant translations; and the title of the third interlude (give or take a word) comes from an artwork by Damien Hirst. Finally, it should be noted that those seeking the ur-text for Nina Simone’s iconic performance, “In the Dark,” can seek Lil Green’s song under its original title: “Romance in the Dark.”
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Alfred Music and Williamson Music: Lyrics from “Give It Back to the Indians,” words by Lorenz Hart and music by Richard Rodgers, copyright © 1939 by Chappell & Co., Inc., copyright renewed by Williamson Music and WB Music Corp. in the USA, Canada, and BRT Territories. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Music and Williamson Music.
Hal Leonard Corporation and Back 2 Da Future Music Ltd.: Lyrics from “Two Sevens Clash” written by Albert Walker, Roy Dayes, and Joseph Hill, copyright © by Back 2 Da Future Music Ltd. and Kassner Music. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation and Back 2 Da Future Music Ltd.
Hal Leonard Corporation and Music Sales Corporation: Lyrics from “Romance in the Dark,” words by Big Bill Broonzy and Lillian Green, music by Lillian Green, copyright © 1940 by MCA Duchess Music Corporation. Universal/MCA Music Limited. Print rights in the United States are controlled by Hal Leonard Corporation. Print and electronic rights outside the United States administered by Music Sales Corporation. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation and Music Sales Corporation.
Harvard University Press: Excerpts from The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin, translated by Howard EIland and Kevin McLaughlin, p. 226, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright © 1999 by the Present and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Patti Smith: Lyrics from “Kimberly” and “Land: Horses, La Mer (de)” by Patti Smith. Reprinted by permission of Patti Smith.
ILLUSTRATIONS CREDITS
Boyer Roger Viollet Getty Images: 25.1, 89.1
Brown University Archives: 25.1
© Buddy Mays / Alamy: 89.2
Chip Kidd (illustration): 58.1
© Jennifer Booher / Alamy: 58.2
© by Ken Regan
Camera 1.1
Getty Images: 15.1
© Kike Calvo VWPICS Alamy: p01.1
Maggie Hinders (illustrations): 58.3–58.4, 70.1
Oliver Munday (illustrations): page 34.1
© Randy Duchaine / Alamy: 25.2
© Roger Humbert / Moment / Getty Images: 70.1
Roméo Enriquez (photographs): 15.1, 25.3, 86.1, 86.2, 89.3, bm1.1
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Garth Risk Hallberg was born in Louisiana and grew up in North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Best New American Voices 2008, and, most frequently, The Millions; a novella, A Field Guide to the North American Family, was published in 2007. He lives in New York with his wife and children.
READING GROUP GUIDE
To view the reading group guide for City on Fire, please visit:
http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/240305/city-on-fire/#trigger_rgg
FACSIMILES
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
BOOK I We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
INTERLUDE The Family Business
BOOK II Scenes from Private Life
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
INTERLUDE The Fireworkers, PART 1
BOOK III Liberty Heights
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
INTERLUDE The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Anyone Now Living
BOOK IV Monads
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
INTERLUDE Bridge and Tunnel
BOOK V The Demon Brother
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
INTERLUDE “Evidence”
BOOK VI Three Kinds of Despair
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
INTERLUDE The Fireworkers, PART 2
BOOK VII In the Dark
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Postscript
Acknowledgments
On Sources
Permissions Acknowledgments
Illustrations Credits
A Note about the Author
Facsimiles
INTERLUDE The Family Business
INTERLUDE The Fireworkers, PART 1
INTERLUDE The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Anyone Now Living
INTERLUDE Bridge and Tunnel
INTERLUDE “Evidence”
INTERLUDE The Fireworkers, PART 2
