DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

                                                                              

 

 

                            Gornick & Milgram: City Navigations

 

Background & Forefront: In a somewhat clinical way, Milgram’s piece from last week describes some interactions and “communication styles” central to urban life.  As we discussed, Milgram’s intent as a scientist is to make an observation, link that observation to a theory and then conduct an experiment that establishes the veracity of the theory with data.  In the reading for today, Vivian Gornick’s aims are very different.  As a writer, her intent is to organize her encounters, with the help of the city’s speed she writes, into a narrative that captures her relationship to herself, her friends, acquaintances, strangers as well as the city at large.  In fact, one of the most profound differences between Milgram’s scientific account and Gornick’s artistic one is how they discuss interactions between strangers.  Keeping that in mind, let’s get started.   

 

 

Part I: Drawing a Relationship Between Milgram and Gornick

 

  • Identify a passage from Milgram that captured your attention.  Why?  Rewrite a few lines of it.

 

  • Identify a passage from Gornick that captured your attention.  Why?  Rewrite a few lines of it.

 

 

  • Do these passages compare or contrast with each other?  Or instead do they have something in common as well as difference between them?  Explain.

 

  • Are there other passages from both texts that highlight this relationship you just identified?  If so, summarize one from Gornick and one from Milgram.

 

 

Part II: Exploring Gornick

 

First, let’s look at two passages.

 

“There are two categories of friendship: those in which people are enlivened by each other and those in which people must be enlivened to be with each other.  In the first category one clears the decks to be together.  In the second one looks for an empty space in the schedule.”

 

“New York Friendship is an education in the struggle between devotions to the melancholy and attraction to the expressive.”

 

Again, Gornick’s essay is very much about relationships and encounters and observing them carefully enough to effectively add “analysis and commentary” to these slices of life in the writing process.  In the writing we are about to do, we are going to employ the categories of experience Gornick explores to uncover our own sense of the city and the people in it.  Respond to 3 of the prompts below.

 

 

  • Gornick discusses her feeling of connectedness with her friend Laura.  Recount a dialogue you have recently had with a close friend by recreating it.  

 

  • Gornick also discusses the loneliness she feels in her relationship with Leonard.  Recount a dialogue you have recently had with a close acquaintance where the distance was palpable.

 

  • Gornick describes being mistaken for someone else by a troubled man while she’s eating a melting yogurt cone.  Describe the last time you were mistaken for someone else or misrecognized someone? 

 

  • Gornick’s essay nearly opens with the rush of anxiety she experiences over her broken faucet accessory and then the relief that abounds once it is fixed.  Describe the last time you endeavored to get a broken object repaired.

 

  • Gornick observes a woman on a crowded bus whose packages are occupying the seat beside her. An older woman who Gornick describes as resembling the modernist poet Gertrude Stein, meaning she was older, heavy-set and smart looking, ends up cursing out the package lady.  Recount the last time you observed someone act in a way or say something that contradicted his or her appearance?  Explain. 

 

  • Gornick describes watching a truck block off an avenue and in the process hears an accent that reminds of her own roots.  When’s the last time you heard someone speak in the language or accent of your home and/or roots?  What does it sound like?  Is it comforting to hear in NYC?  Or does it make you feel another way? Explain.

 

  • An automobile accident occurs.  Both parties exit their vehicles hopping mad.  Then a police officer arrives and settles it, according to Gornick’s recollection of an accident on Thirty-fourth and Second.  Describe the last accident you encountered.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.