Morgan Library

Prior to our visit this past Wednesday, I had never heard of or been to the Morgan Library. I knew nothing about it. The fact that it was in anyway even affiliated with J.P. Morgan hadn't even occurred to me until Declan Kiely mentioned it at the beginning of his presentation. The presentation struck me as engaging, and there was certainly an element of excitement in being able to hold a letter written by Edgar Allan Poe; to gloss over original manuscripts of Henry James' works; and to know that somewhere in a room just above or below me was Bob Dylan's notebook. Aside, however, from the discussion of why it is important and/or interesting for us to have these artifacts to besides just to "ooh" and "ah" at, I did not feel like I was going to come away with any new or really challenging ideas until the very end of the presentation.

Somewhere towards the end of Dr. Kiely's presentation - or, I should say, some time before I left, and it may have been after class was officially over or before - he took a moment to lament the fact that a physical community of creative minds like the one that existed around Washington Square and in the Village for a number of generations will (so he believes, and I agree) never come into being again. With modern communication technologies, a writer can work with an editor in an entirely different country. Musicians may sometimes record a track and send it overseas to an artist who they've never met who will lay down another track and subsequently send it off to a mixing engineer on another coast. It isn't that artists aren't collaborating, but that they are doing so less naturally. There is no longer any place or even any perceived need for a place where they are living almost exclusively amongst each other.

Arguably, there is still art being made of all kinds that is as good and better - no, more innovative - than the art that was coming out of the Square during its heyday as a center of creative output. Quality and memorability is not the issue. The issue is that most people our age who appreciate the Village for what is left of it as Manhattan's last toehold in the realm of American Bohemia, myself included, are entertaining nostalgia for something we've never seen and never will see. I have believed, at times, that I am seeing it, and that the claims that it is not even close to what it was come from jaded critics. There is certainly something there, but the difference, as I see it, is that Washington Square, when it really was what people still tend to think of it as, was both a microcosm of and the foundation of a culture that defined a generation.

With the advent of the internet and the ability for anyone and everyone to express themselves for the world to hear and see comes a new trend that is both fantastic and a little dispiriting: today's expressive culture is a culture of subcultures, and is thus defined by its generation, rather than defining it. Dr. Kiely points out that the predominance of electronic communications hampers our ability to keep track of the big players. Furthermore, it is impossible to even say who the big players are, because to anyone whose subculture is explicitly and incorrigibly removed from the mainstream, the "big players" are a side story.

I realize that I've digressed entirely from a reflection about our visit itself, but this little miniature essay is sort of a snapshot of what I thought about afterwards and what I got out of Dr. Kiely's presentation. I think it is an interesting thing to consider, especially in the context of the endless pages of literature that one can we read (some of which we've been reading) on the many ways in which the Village is always being refaced.

--Jonny