Happy Fourth of July from Seattlest
Seattlest Pix: 09Jul04
Seattlest Pix: 09Jul05
Seattle Int'l Beer Festival Ends at 7 p.m.
What does the Noo Yawk Effing Times have against Seattle?
Frank Bruni, their restaurant critic, puts together a list of ten hot new restaurants around the country. Geographic balance, gotta find one in the Pacific Northwest, let's see: green corner of the country, organic is hot, women chefs are hot, anything fit the bill? Wow! A two-fer, right in Seattle: Tilth, all green and a woman at the stove to boot.
They send Matt Richtel to write about a winter's day in Seattle; he starts his piece thus: "Drink coffee. Put on another layer of dry clothes. Repeat." Hit snooze button. Repeat.
They send their "Frugal Traveler," Matt Gross, to Seattle for the express purpose of sampling happy hours. He goes to Cascadia, but finds their $1 miniburgers "bland and overcooked," even though the dollar miniburgers haven't been around for well over a year. (They're $2.50.) Don't they have fact-checkers at the Times? Or can't the Frugal Traveler afford to google "Cascadia Miniburgers"?
Which brings us to The Times's "local" observer of our local economy. The thought being that newsroom editors in New York are out of touch with what's happening around the country and can't be bothered actually reading online editions of papers in other towns or asking their own bureaus; they need "local" stories with a fresh perspective. And who better than a Hungarian-born British travel writer and novelist to spy on Seattle?
That would be Jonathan Raban, who moved from London to Queen Anne in 1990 and wrapped up a series of conflated Seattle vignettes in Sunday's paper.
Here we have the author of two overpraised works of fiction conveniently set in Seattle (Waxwings and Surveillance) writing now about a poetry-spouting homeless man, whose favorite poem just happens to be a rambling piece of proto-feminism reinterpreted as an attack on materialism (Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"). The observer who interpreted the dot-com bust--in fiction--as a medieval morality play would now have us believe--in non-fictional reality--that Seattle is a Gomorrah of overwrought selfishness. The Gucci counter at Nordstrom's aside, Raban and his homeless alter ego paint an unreasonably upbeat picture of Seattle, lusting after expensive new baubles while the rest of the country pawns its jewelry.
The fault doesn't lie with Raban, who has every right to his vision, but with the editors who print this nonsense. Fine when a critical essay appears in a local blog like Crosscut; not so much when it's massaged for national exposure.
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ah, come on now - you're much too sensitive Ronald. And you only confirm the opinion that Seattealites are parochial and, well, overly sensitive. I liked Raban's piece. Let him have his opinion. Who cares if it's given national exposure? I sure don't. Why would you care what the rest of the country thinks of Seattle ? I like it here, And I could care less what anyone thinks.
What gets me, Ron-From-Beacon-Hill, is the way the NY Times gives Seattle the monkey-in-the-zoo treatment. Look! How quaint! They're behaving almost like people! Or the pet-dog treatment: it's almost as if he knows what we're talking about! Maddening, this is, and has nothing to do with Seattlites being parochial. Which they are.
I liked Raban's novels -- they DID catch something really important about the spirit of this city. (I didn't like the endings of either one, but I also don't need a novel to be perfect in order to enjoy it.) He wasn't a bad pick for the Seattle pieces in the NY Times.
Seattle's always been given the monkey-in-the-zoo treatment from the East Coast, but who cares? We're a younger city, a younger culture, and NYC culture/media tends to look down its nose at everything as a matter of course. I don't take offense at it.
Not so much "taking offense" as being annoyed that lazy mainstream editors yet again relied on clichés. It's regrettable, paint-by-numbers journalism...unworthy of the NYTimes (fallen upon hard times) and condescending to its readers. Thank goodness for alternative voices (like Seattlest, like Slog).
Whatevs.
They just don't want their populace to know that we have everything they secretly yearn for in a city.
They're just pissed off we're stealing their best and brightest.
@Troy
haha Not to mention we're recruiting their police force now.
Seattle is parochial?! Pah-lease! Nothing ever happens in Seattle. We are constantly forced to look out of our city when we turn on the news or other shows. All references to "Washington" refer to the DC, not the WA.
If any place is parochial, it is New York City. I've never seen a larger group of navel-gazers as that bunch. Hell, half the shows on TV are based in New York. As far as they're concerned, it's not just the world that revolves around NYC, it's the entire freakin universe!
(posting this for Jonathan, because for some reason it wouldn't let him post it.)
Aha! It's "Go home, limey, and mind your business" time on Seattlest today, I see.
If you wanted to impugn me and my work, it might have helped your cause to get at least one fact right. No doubt to emphasise my alienness (and add a further disqualification to my entitlement to write about Seattle), you say that I am "Hungarian-born." Come again? I have no familial or other attachment to Hungary, a country I have never visited. Despite my rather odd-sounding second name, the Rabans came from the village of Penn in Staffordshire, England, where they were listed as farmers in 1570, when the earliest extant parish records began. No- speakee Finno-Ugric, I'm sad to say.
It is apparently "fine" for me to publish a critical essay about Seattle in "a local blog like Crosscut." Only trouble is, that piece first appeared in the Financial Times, published in London and New York. Crosscut sought permission from the FT to post it on their site, and acknowledged its original source when they put it up.
I have been writing about Seattle for nearly twenty years. The city figures prominently, not just in Waxwings and Surveillance, but in my books Hunting Mister Heartbreak, Bad Land (which won the National Book Critics Circle award and was, in paperback, on the New York Times bestseller list), Passage to Juneau, and my collection of post 9/11 essays, My Holy War.
Your descriptions of both my NYT piece yesterday and Christina Rossetti's poem are travesties, as any reader who takes the trouble to seek them out will see for him/herself.
By the way, the four pieces that I contributed to the series, for which I was invited to write by the NYT, were not "conflated vignettes of Seattle." The first was about the the land east of the Cascades, the second and third were about Forks, WA. Only the last was about Seattle. Which--on the basis of your description of Rossetti's poem--is a fair measure of your reading skills.
Heigh ho. Peace and goodwill to all...
>> Jonathan Raban
Fuck yeah. I knew I liked him.
knew i liked him too.
Impressive riposte, might I add. Humble apologies for the factual errors, Finno-Ugric aspersions, etc. Mr. Raban is welcome to stop by the bar at Sorrentino on Queen Anne any Friday or Saturday night for a glass or two on the house.
Wow, this has been fun!
You don't seriously think that The New York Times 'has it in' for Seattle! There's two things about your tone: a touch of wounded pride (the Times editors don't have the time to read your posts, so they bring in some 'Hungarian Limey'!!); and some sort of overcompensation. Come on, Ronald. You actually seem to get a little vapory over seeing your little town up there in the big lights.
The other possibility, of course, is that you're a 'spurned freelancer'.
That's it, isn't it?
Oh, the $2.50 mini-burgers piece you could have written. Well don't take it out on Raban. His writing on Seattle--both fiction and non-fiction--has been exemplary. He is easily one of the best writers in English working today. And when it comes to writing about place, without a doubt one of the best writers in any language over the last one hundred years.
Jim in NY
Wow. Talk about a total ass-kicking, Ronald. Hope Sorrentino has a delightful wine that goes well with the crow you had to choke down.