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John Steinbeck On What Makes A New Yorker
By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 14, 2014
Modified Mar 14, 2014
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 14, 2014
Modified Mar 14, 2014
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In the early 1920s, John Steinbeck moved to New York City and briefly worked on version 3.0 of Madison Square Garden, which was open from 1925 through 1968 and was located at 8th Avenue and 49th Street. According to his biographers, Steinbeck wasn't quite cut out for the physical labor and ended up quitting when he saw a man fall to his death on the job.
In this book, the writer's struggle with being a construction worker is explained:
"Steinbeck soon obtained a job working on the construction of Madison Square Garden. For the next few weeks, he pushed 150-pound wheelbarrows of cement all day long. If he wanted to earn overtime—at the rate of $2 an hour—he worked 10 to 18 hour days. Steinbeck, already a tall, husky young man, became more muscular from all the manual labor. But in contrast to the bright lights of Broadway, the partially built Madison Square Garden was as cold and dark as a cave. Construction lights strung along the scaffolds sent long beams down through the planks and gave them men just enough light to know where they were.
Big 'salamanders' of glowing read coals were set here and there on the ground so the men could warm their loads of wet mortar when they started to freeze. The cold and heavy work numbed Steinbeck's hands and feet, but he would stop occasionally to warm himself near the coals, grateful for the moment of rest."
MSG in 1940. (Getty)
"One day, five or six weeks after he began the job, a worker stumbled on a scaffold, high up, near the ceiling. The man fell to his death, near where Steinbeck stood. Steinbeck looked down in horror and shock at the man's blood, then turned away and was violently sick. That night, he collected his check and never returned to the job, glad to be done with it. The work had been too exhausting, and he never had energy left for writing.
According to his sister, 'He couldn't even read the newspapers when he got home at night... I'd give him a sandwich, and he'd go straight to bed, where he'd sit with a pencil and try to write a few lines. But he knew it would never work. You couldn't do that kind of physical work and think at the same time.'"
After that, Steinbeck's connected uncle Joe Hamilton got him a job as a reporter for the New York American, a Hearst paper... but he was fired. Instead of going back to manual labor, Steinbeck gave up the urban life and returned to California in 1926. (A timeless tale! Though he did return, and lived here until he died in 1968.)
Steinbeck later wrote about the experience in an essay titled “Making of a New Yorker,” published in the New York Times in 1953 (PDF), when he was living in New York again. He wrote:
"The city had beat the pants off me. Whatever it required to get ahead, I didn’t have it. I didn’t leave the city in disgust—I left it with the respect plain, unadulterated fear gives. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it—once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theater, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy.''
You can read the full thing here, and here's a response from a New Yorker:
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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