Literary Landmarks of New York: The Algonquin Hotel

Communities like WritopiaLabs show us just how much New York can--and does--inspire writers and artists of all ages and all interests. With its vibrancy, diversity and unpredictability, New York has been the birthplace of so much creative expression that it's almost impossible to quantify it; Arthur Miller, Mel Brooks, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Madeleine L'Engle, Herman Melville, and Chaim Potok all spent significant parts of their careers living here, to name just a few. As a result, New York is filled with "literary landmarks"--places where writers lived, worked, met to share ideas, or simply found inspiration. Some are better known than others: children's-book character Eloise famously wreaked havoc in the Plaza, and Henry James' Washington Square was set in the downtown New York neighborhood of the same name. However, many places have slipped out of New York's collective memory, despite the fact that they were instrumental in the development of our city's cultural history.

The first place that I found out about in my quest to uncover New York's literary landmarks is the Algonquin Hotel.

Located on West 44th St. in Manhattan, the Algonquin is an unassuming, albeit luxurious hotel, with very little to outwardly distinguish it from the many such hotels in the neighborhood. However, what sets it apart is not any singular characteristic, but rather, the history that occurred within its walls. In 1919, a series of lunchtime meetings began in the hotel, which were called the "Algonquin Round Table." The Round Table, which later came to be known as the "Vicious Circle" for its members' biting wit, was a meeting-place for New York journalists, authors, actors and publishers, such as John Barrymore, George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker; such lunches occurred pretty much daily between 1919 and 1929. The ideas, tastes, and themes of that booming decade--one which would prove among the most culturally prolific in American history--were created and dissected in Round Table meetings. Ultimately, all of the literary greats of the Roaring Twenties, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, would spend some time at the Algonquin, exchanging "bon mots" about society, literature, and anything they saw fit. In fact, Fitzgerald had a family portrait taken in the lobby of the Algonquin near the end of his life. He could not have chosen a more appropriate place.

-Emma

I am a sixteen-year-old high school student, about to enter my final year of high school, looking to improve my writing and to meet and learn from people who are trying to do the same. I have loved books--and loved writing--ever since I was quite wee, and find in Writopia the kind of warm, welcoming writers' community that I think is vital to keeping that love of words and that creativity alive and thriving. Read more!

Book of the Week

Find something exciting in a magazine, newspaper, or perhaps an entire book? Well write about it here in the Book of the Week. Change the name of the column, flip it around and do whatever makes you happy. This column is a way to share what interests you in different forms of writing. Take some time, read some more, write.

Fueled by my current listening of Bollywood singer, Lata Mangeshkar, I decided to recommend a book I finished reading a couple of months ago. Taking place in multiple time periods but connected by a common thread, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is a novel worth spending time with.
The Namesake begins with the birth of the main character of the story, Gogol Ganguli. Immediately Jhumpa Lahiri’s detailed and emotional writing transports the reader into the lives of the Ganguli’s. The Gangulis are a Bengaline family from Calcutta, India. We learn not only the life and struggles of Gogol, a child of immigrants, as he makes his way into the world, but also the events in his parent’s lives that helped shape who they are.
The story can be seen as an immigrant tale showing the constant hardships for not only immigrants in America, but for their American born children. Often native born American citizens forget the struggles that immigrants are forced to experience. The Namesake shows the fortunes gained as well as the extreme loneliness and isolation felt in becoming an American. Are immigrants ever truly "Americanized?"
The story has an even stronger theme of family. Family in Bengali culture is a core component in everyday life. As children grow, they never fully leave their family although often it is this constant reliance on the family that may hinder them later on.
Gogol is a character that gets beneath the readers skin and causes them to want to scream some sense in his head. Jhumpa Lahiri thoroughly develops each character to the point where both their actions and words are understood, even if not agreed with. What I truly enjoyed in The Namesake were the family relations. The Gangulis try to continue raising their family in a traditional Bengali way, and their children become the ones to break out of that mold.
I could relate to Gogol's problems as a teenager, not being fully understood by adults and trying to realize his place in the world outside of his family. The realistic portrayal of the Ganguli's remind me of people I know and of a life that I never had to lead, as an immigrant and having two homelands, the one of your people and the one of your family.

Although I wouldn't call this book light and airy, why not have a little depth in your summer reading or your reading in general? If you happen to be the Goldilocks in your literary choosing, then here's a book for you. It's not too dark and not too light but just right.

Read more!

Here’s to a different sort of article about Iraq…

Earlier today I typed in “Iraq” on to Google News, the Google function which spans across the world wide web providing access to a great number of news sources. I got 151,287 articles – not bad. Then I searched “Iraqi culture” – 1,386. That’s a little less than 1%, to put figures into perspective. Today, in the graduated stages of the Iraq War, we are attempting to understand ways to reconstruct the country with the help of the populace. It’s a little ironic then, that there are so few articles about what makes an Iraqi an Iraqi – the culture, history, music, which define an Iraqi. Only through greater understanding can we understand better how to fix the broken land.
After searching “Iraqi culture,” I decided to be more specific, though to unsuccessful ends. “Kurdish song and dance” yields exactly one (that’s a percentage of .0065, if we are to be consistent). This is a pretty shabby number, and so, with this first column, I intend to double the results.

The Kurds are an ethnic group primarily found in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, though they can be located in several other states in the region. There has never been an official “Kurdistan,” though the Treaty of Sevres, signed at the end of World War I, as the Ottoman Empire dissolved, provided for it. The Kurds were not to enjoy Wilson’s “self-determination” principles – after Kemal Ataturk modernized and militarized Turkey, it never signed the treaty, and eventually “Kurdistan” was delegated to Iraq. This proved deadly to many Kurds when, by the hand of Saddam Hussein, chemical weapons were used on them during the Iraq-Iran war.
Nevertheless, the Kurds find something to celebrate. The “dobke” is one of the most popular dances – it can go on for hours on end (who knew the Kurds were such wild partiers?) A single-file line is formed behind a leader who waves a handkerchief and hisses every time he changes a step. Accompanying the dance is usually a singer or two, singing in falsetto Kurdish, usually about love, war, and hardship. Some classic Kurdish songs are the “Lawk” and the “Hairan.” The crowd many times joins in with claps, snaps, and a “lu-lu-lu-lu” cry of joy.
Snapping and clapping are not so different from what we Americans do at our concerts and dance performances at home. The lyrics of traditional Kurdish tunes only further illustrate the similarities between the two social groups.
Truth be told, these lyrics [“Sing for me just a little more/ Open your heart for just a few days/ I cannot live without you/ Come let me have a kiss/ It is not winter but spring/ But alas! I cannot speak to her, not even a hello/ Because of her mother who watches her day and night”] are not disparately different from these [“All you people can't you see, can't you see/How your love's affecting our reality/Every time we're down/You can make it right/And that makes you larger than (that make you larger than)/That makes you larger/That makes you larger than life”]. The resemblance is striking.
The truth is, in this type of situation, we need to think creatively for solutions. Partition, withdrawal, and a police state are all highly contested, and will likely prove devastating. We need to focus on the cultural aspects of Iraq more. Who knows…Nick Carter may very well be the first step towards rebuilding Arab trust in America.

Ruthie is a New York City high school junior. Read more!