{"id":78243,"date":"2014-10-20T16:35:28","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T20:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=78243"},"modified":"2014-10-20T16:35:28","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T20:35:28","slug":"rote-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/20\/rote-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Rote Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bleecker_Street_IRT_1905\"<\/a>

A postcard of the Bleecker Street IRT stop, 1905.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen the point of New York,\u201d someone said to me last week, in a foreign city, upon learning that it was my hometown.<\/p>\n

I must confess to being nonplussed by this. I hadn\u2019t fielded such an idiotic remark since middle school. Back then, I would have responded in kind with some nonsense\u2014\u201cWell, since it\u2019s not pyramid-shaped, neither have I,\u201d or something about John Stuart Mill, if I knew about him\u2014but now this did not come so easily. Most of us have long since learned that there\u2019s not much sport in breaking the fine-print clauses of the social contract.<\/p>\n

And most of us learn the hard way. My most shameful memory is of creeping around a tree, perhaps in second grade, at Reynolds Field, and hissing, \u201cCandy is dandy, but liquor is quicker,\u201d at a mystified five-year-old. I knew instantly that I had not conjured the mystery and allure I\u2019d been going for; that I was, in fact, an ass. I have never admitted that before. I wonder if that kid remembers it. I really hope not.<\/p>\n

But now I am a grown-up. So I quoted to him one of the few things I know by heart:<\/p>\n

\n

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city\u2019s walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I finished. We stared at each other blankly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was E.B. White,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI meant it rhetorically,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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