Archive for December, 2007
Although the year — and our annual ceremony — is fast winding down, we felt that we could not let it slip by without acknowledging 2007’s most remarkably opaque book review, which today appeared — just under the wire! — in The Times Sunday Book Review. Because this was easily the most remarkably opaque book […]
Filed under: Drivel, Literature, The Times | 1 Comment
Tags: Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee, Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Sunday Book Review
We could not look back at 2007 without offering our appreciation to all of the scientists out there whose groundbreaking research has done so much to perpetuate our society’s most cherished and deeply held gay stereotypes. It is most remarkable how in every instance, such research continues to ignore a — if not “the” — […]
Filed under: Drivel, Gay, Government, Language, Law, Science, Stereotypes, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Best of 2007, David France, gay fruit flies, gay mice, Gay Research, Gay Science, Gay Stereotypes, John Tierney, New York Magazine, The Gay and Lesbian Review
In our daily travels, we are regularly confronted by some of our more clever but literal-minded critics with the question of why we would ever want to publish our thoughts and observations, if in fact it is our unending desire to be reclusive, or to obtain — in our own lexicon — a “community-free” existence. […]
Filed under: Gay, Infrastructure, Philosophers, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, The Winter Garden, Weather, Writers-German | Leave a Comment
Tags: Best of 2007, Community, Corsican Mint, Deserts, Gy Rclus, Gy Rcluse, Gy Recluse, Kant, Schopenhauer, Search Engines, Site Meter
Though we’ve long planned to honor the genus Picea — or more commonly, the spruce — for playing such a pivotal role in the continuing drama that is our backyard garden, we felt that it would be even more appropriate to offer a special acknowledgment to three of these trees who have graced us under […]
Filed under: The Autumn Garden, The Gay Recluse, The Winter Garden | Leave a Comment
Tags: Norway Spruce, Picea Abies Cupressina, Picea Abies Hillside Upright, Picea Omorike Pendula, Weeping Serbian Spruce
More than any other neighborhood in Manhattan, Washington Heights — except for a few enclaves north of the George Washington Bridge — has existed in a state of commercial paralysis, so that as we stroll up and down Broadway, we are tempted to say (and with the expected derision) that nothing has changed for at […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Gentrification, Landscape, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2007 Awards, Broadway, Columbia Medical, Florist, Joa, Starbucks, Uptown, Vantage Properties, Washington Mutual
True, there’s a part of us that wants to mock this display in the entrance to our parking garage in Washington Heights; to note with derision the odd juxtaposition of the toy sports-car bear with the postcard portrait of a baby Jesus; to look with disdain at the tree itself, oddly pathetic and completely garish, […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Longing, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Christmas, Faith, Jingle Bells, Logic, Outsider Art, Parking Garage
With the publication of Henry James: The Mature Master, the second in a two-volume biography by Sheldon Novick, we can expect the coming weeks/months/years to be marked by the usual chorus of naysayers who like to challenge any assertion of same-sex activity by a historical figure — even one like James with such a recognizable […]
Filed under: Gay, History, Literature, The Times, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: David Leavitt, Gay History, Gay Literature, Henry James, Leon Edel, Sheldon Novick
Each morning we turn the corner onto Broadway and are newly amazed by the cataclysmic arrangements of trash and debris on the streets and sidewalks. Plastic bags and dead leaves circle south in violent little eddies, while chicken bones, boxes, mannequin torsos and car batteries can be found heaped up on the curb. A barren, […]
Filed under: Decay, Gay, Good Rock, New York City, Resignation, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Broadway, Dead Leaves, Litter, Parking Meters, Plastic Bags, Saturnine, Washington Heights
Today we dreamed of traveling to a small island off the coast of Japan called Gukanjima. Only three-quarters of a mile around, during its heyday it nevertheless was home to over 5000 people, which for decades made it the world’s most densely populated island. Looking at pictures of it now, we imagine a city block […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Decay, Dream, Gentrification, New York City, Nostalgia, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Edwardian Architecture, Gukanjima, Japan, Manhattan, Washington Heights
How sad we are to learn (this from The Times) that “the New York City Council cleared the way this afternoon for a 17-acre campus expansion by Columbia University, the largest in its history.” How sorry we are for Nick Sprayregen and his family, the owners of Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, the largest private-property owners in the […]
Filed under: Architecture, Gentrification, Government, New York City, The Times, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Columbia University, Eminent Domain, New York City Council, Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, West Harlem
Today we heard the unfamiliar whine of a dog on the subway. Poor thing! We can imagine no environment more foreign or artificial to a dog’s sensibility than a New York City subway car, between the plastic orange seating, linoleum floors, steel poles and preposterous advertisements. (Dr. Zizmor, anyone?) Or — from a sonic perspective […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Infrastructure, Longing, New York City, Subway | Leave a Comment
Tags: A-train, Dogs, Human Condition, New York City, Philosophy, Subway
Today we were both amused and disheartened to find a panoply of gay code words used in a N.Y./Region (long our favorite section) piece in The Times on Mr. William J. Dane, a curator and art scholar who has maintained the Newark Library’s collection of prints and rare books for more than six decades. To […]
Filed under: Drivel, Gay, Language, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gay Code Words, Gay Euphemisms, Stereotypes, Stilted Prose, The New York Times
On Decembers Past
With so much pressure and anticipation, this — namely, the week before Christmas — was when we could stand it no longer: it was time to mount an expedition into that most forbidden and exotic of all domestic locales, our mother’s bedroom closet. To even enter our parents’ bedroom felt dangerous; it was the one […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Memory, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bedroom Closet, Christmas, Family, Gifts, Pittsburgh, Transgression
On the Beauty of Extreme Weather
What? Only two inches of slush? That’s not a storm! It’s a transition, a pause, a hiccup and (most of all, after all the buildup) a disappointment. But seriously, do you remember the time — we were still in school then, so it would have been at least 100 years ago — when it snowed […]
Filed under: Landscape, Memory, New York City, Pleasure, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: Down Jacket, Snow, The Great White Hurricane, Winter
In yesterday’s Times, we were told that Italy has sunk to new depths of despair on many fronts, “struggling as few other countries do with fractured politics, uneven growth, organized crime and a tenuous sense of nationhood.” There is widespread malaise, or malessere. Quoted is Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome: “It’s a country that […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, History, Nostalgia, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Economy, GNP, Italy, Schopenhauer, The New York Times, Turin, Venice
On the Pleasure of Ruins
We read about the MTA’s proposal to raise subway fares with mixed feelings; on one hand, we would happily pay the extra five or six dollars a month for more frequent trains, but at the same time, as we consider the ruined state of our subway station — regularly cited as one of the dirtiest […]
Filed under: Architecture, Decay, Gay, Infrastructure, Literature, New York City, Subway, Washington Heights, Writers-Hungarian | Leave a Comment
Tags: Art Deco, Book of Memories, Fare Hike, MTA, Peter Nadas, Subway
Have we ever told you just how grateful we are to the Audubon Station Post Office in Washington Heights? They have taught us so much, and not just about patience and resolve when it comes to standing in the six-hour lines that perpetually meander through their sallow, fluorescent interiors, but about the need to resign […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Gentrification, Infrastructure, New York City, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Audubun Station, Mail, Thomas Pynchon, Thurn und Taxis, Trystero, United States Postal Service, USPS, Washington Heights
The Gay Recluse 