Daily Blague

Sounds like a lovely evening. Should one read other McEwan books before "Saturday?" Is it an okay place to begin? I can't wait to sink my teeth into Dawn Powell on the flight tonight.

Re: high line. I want to visit it. That's a summer project. I need to begin a list. So should you!

Great link to the High Line site! I have walked the line (subject of a future Promenade?), but had not seen the site or its photos.

That High Line site is great.

The CSX is indeed a private company, but I think they probably acquired it when they ate Conrail, one of the very few public (i.e., "state-owned," though that term lends itself to great confusion when used in a US context) companies ever to exist in the US. So if I'm right, it once was public property (though undoubtedly off-limits public property), but is no longer.

Recall that our incompetent Secretary of the Treasury John Snow led an extremely undistinguished career as CEO of CSX.

Ms NOLA: As the High Line site advises, no trespassing on the High Line.

Buttah: As soon as it's open, I'll be up there strolling. If there's one thing that New York is short on, it's second-storey views.

Max: As Amtrak's current plight reminds us, the passenger-railroad "business" in this country has been run not so much by incompetent executives as by a culture of incompetence. I believe that we ought to import the managers from Europe, as the third-world country that, in this department, we are.

No trespassing? Did I hear that right? Hmm, I wonder why I know a bunch of people who have walked it? Also, why does Gothamist endorse seeing it (and by seeing, I mean, walking)? Bummer.

On getting to know Ian McEwan: Mr McEwan has grown enormously over his career, and to appreciate this fully I think it best to start with something relatively early. In the alternative, one might begin with his sole novella. Here are three suggestions:

Gothic: Begin with The Comfort of Strangers, Mr McEwan's second novel. If you have seen the film adaptation of this novel, proceed to another selection. The Comfort of Strangers is set in an unnamed city that happens to have lots of canals and piazze and - I can't remember if they're actually named - gondolas. The stunt of never naming the obvious gives a vodka-shot headiness to this tale of young naifs abroad.

Thrilling: Not that The Comfort of Strangers doesn't make for gasping, but in The Innocent, Mr McEwan's "breakout" novel, at least here in the US, the writer delivers an espionage caper, set in Berlin in 1955, that keeps picking up speed until you're almost as wrung out as its hero, Leonard Marnham. Tapes, tunnels, and a searing but sobering game of "Hide the Salami" are mere background to a turned-around version of Rear Window. Can you handle it?

Mordant: A mere bagatelle, Amsterdam can be read in one sitting - if you've got a quiet day ahead of you. The book's core is very dark, but Mr McEwan restrains our sympathies for his principal characters, old friends with mutual grudges, so effectively that we never feel really sorry for what happens to them. No - it serves 'em right! At full novel length, Amsterdam would be unbearable: either irritating or heartless, and the book is a master class in giving a tricky story effective presentation.

McEwan: I keep intending to read more. I loved The Innocent, didn't particularly like Amsterdam -- found it a bit trifling. And, yes, heartless.

Canals? Piazze? Gondolas? Obviously Birmingham (UK), right?

Re the railroad business: Interestingly, I recall reading that a higher proportion of freight is shipped by rail in the US than in Europe, though these might be defective data or memory. And CSX/Conrail are exclusively freight.

The problem here is that we have trouble investing in public good (except the Interstate system), so we aren't willing to sink the billions into rail transport that it takes to make good passenger rail service. France continues to run its extraordinary national network as a state enterprise with a large deficit. The UK privatized, and changed a once-great rail network into one of the worst in Europe (it's still better than ours, despite some horrific rail disasters chalked up to poor maintenance due to privatization). Germany also privatized, though less catastrophically than the UK.

But it's not just money -- there is indeed a culture of incompetence in railroads here.

The Interstate Highway System has always been subsidized as a military necessity, specious as that objective might be.

When Kathleen was a municipal bond lawyer, she learned of an inarguable maxim: You cannot make a profit by moving people from A to B. (Cruises are the gloriously fake exception - they don't go anywhere, but are floating hotels.) Railways and steamship lines supported themselves by carrying freight and mail as well. Our highway and airline systems are hugely, almost unthinkingly subsidized in countless ways and at all levels of government, but the legislatures "wake up" when it comes to Amtrak, which most people who don't use the trains see as quaint (pre-auto, pre-plane).