[lit-ideas] The Island Called Gotham
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:33:19 EST
A: Cornelius doesn't seem to be having a girlfriend these days.
B: He _lives_ in New York. Only comes to campus for the sporting events.
A: You think he'll get a gentleman's "C"", then?
B: Well, he does have beautiful handwriting.
Thanks to E. Yost for a memorable description of NY eccentrics, opinions,
and implicatures.
I was meaning to quote from an interview to Tom [Cornelius] Vanderbilt,
where he expands on the Astors, Belmonts or Hearsts. Instead, I found this
link
online to Vanderbilt's review of "Gotham: A History of New York City" by Prof.
Wallace, "Professor of New York Studies" at City University of New York
City.
"In this colossal history of New York from its founding until 1898, authors
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace present this col<NOBR>as a city where a
sense of place is best understood through time. The narrative of Gotham hovers
over the
<NOBR>drifting along thematic currents, occasionally catching a cataclysmic
gust; it drops in for a vivid close-up only to reas
<NOBR>with equal aplomb, for a global pano
<NOBR>The incident of the transfer from Gotham, Notts. to Gotham, the New
World is credited to W. Ir
1807 W. IRVING Salmag. xvii. (1811) II. 155 Chap. cix. of the chronicles of
the renowned and antient city of Gotham.
1807 W. IRVING Salmag. xvii. (1811) II. 160 Whereat the
Gothamites..marvelled exceedingly.
1852 JUTSON Myst. N.Y. xiii. (Farmer), One of the vilest of all hells in
Gotham.
"Gohttp://www.gothamcenter.org/faq.shtmltham"; "Gotham was first used in
reference to Manhattan by Washington Irving in the early 19th century. The
word
itself is English in origin and dates from the Middle Ages. Gotham, or
"Gotam", was the name of a real and often-ridiculed town in England, whose
residents
had a reputation for madness. A variant on this story was that Gothamites
were not truly mad but simply "wise enough to play the fool" -- in a variety
of
ways they merely acted silly to gain their ends. "It was doubtless this more
beguiling-if tricksterish-sense of Gotham that Manhattanistes assumed as an
acceptable nickname for their city."
_http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-got1.htm_
(http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-got1.htm)
From Gregory Hefner: “Could you please tell me how Gotham came to be a
reference to New York City?” "It’s the fault of Washington Irving. He applied
the name to New York in an issue of a humorous magazine name Salmagundi, a
title taken from the name of a salad which consists of a variety of
ingredients.
The original Gotham is popularly supposed to be the village of that name in
Nottinghamshire, though I gather there’s little good evidence of this. The
story is that bad King John (Magna Carta etc) decided to visit Gotham on a
royal
progress, though why he should when he had a perfectly good castle to stay
at just up the road at Nottingham is not explained. The villagers realised
this would be inconvenient and expensive because of the size of the king’s
retinue. They decided to pretend to be imbecilic in front of the king’s
heralds,
by trying to fish the moon out of a pond, running madly in circles, trying to
drown an eel, clasping hands around a thorn bush to imprison a cuckoo, and
other crazy actions. The ploy worked and the king decided not to come. A
collection of tales about stupidity was published in the reign of Henry VIII,
entitled The Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham. So the name had by
Washington
Irving’s time long been associated with stupidity, even though the original
story was actually about a kind of twisted cleverness. Washington Irving
thought this just the name to give to a city which he believed was inhabited
by
fools."
NEW YORK CITY: KEYWORD: MILLIONAIRE: John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst.
JLS
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