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Modern Culture on the New York City Subway Amherst and Boston Stalter-Pace The New York City subway has been celebrated as the technological embod- iment of the American melting pot and reviled as a blighted urban netherworld. Underground Movements explores the many meanings of the subway by looking back at the era when it first ascended to cultural prominence, from its opening in 1904 through the mid-1960s. UNDERGRO Sunny Stalter-Pace analyzes a broad range of texts written during this period— news articles, modernist poetry, ethnic plays, migration narratives, as well as canonical works by authors such as Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, and Ralph Ellison—to illustrate the subway’s central importance as a site of abstract connection, both between different parts of the city and between city dwellers who ride the train together. Even today, the symbolic associations forged by these early U texts continue to influence understanding of the cultural significance of the sub- ND MOVE way and the city it connects. “A stimulating and impressive book. Its interdisciplinary breadth is admirable and its comprehensive account of New York subway texts provides a model for historically and geographically grounded literary research.” M —Hsuan Hsu, author of Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteeth-Century American Literature ENTS Sunny Stalter-Pace is associate professor of English at Auburn University. UNDERGROUND A volume in the series Science/Technology/Culture MOVEMENTS •••••••••••••••••••• University of Massachusetts Press Massachusetts Modern Culture on the New York City Subway Amherst and Boston www.umass.edu/umpress Cover art by O. Louis Guglielmi, Subway Exit, 1946. Courtesy Advancing American Art Collection of the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama. Cover design by Sally Nichols Sunny Stalter-Pace Stalter_Pace_Cover_Final.indd 1 11/5/13 12:01 PM “This page intentionally left blank” UNDER- GROUND MOVE- MENTS •••••••••••••••••••• Modern Culture on the New York City Subway A Volume in the Series Science/Technology/Culture edited by Carolyn de la Peña Siva Vaidhyanathan UNDER- GROUND MOVE- MENTS •••••••••••••••••••• Modern Culture on the New York City Subway Sunny Stalter-Pace UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS Amherst and Boston Copyright © 2013 by University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-62534-055-9 (paper); 054-2 (hardcover) Designed by Sally Nichols Set in Quadraat OT Printed and bound by IBT/Hamilton, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is on file at the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. For L.B. “This page intentionally left blank” Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction Subway Stories 1 1. Forming the Subway Habit 24 2. How the Subway Became Sublime 52 3. Minding the Gaps in Modernist Poetry 78 4. Underground Assimilation in Ethnic Drama 110 5. Uncanny Migration Narratives 140 Conclusion The Private Subway in the Postmodern City 166 Notes 191 Works Cited 205 Index 225 [ vii ] “This page intentionally left blank” Acknowledgments My book explores the impersonal community created in the underground space of the New York City subway. I want to take a moment to acknowl- edge the network of friends, colleagues, and family members that helped me bring these shadowy ideas to light. First, I express my warmest gratitude to my mother, Jill. She has been a cheerleader, a sounding board, and a friend. This book would not have been possible without her. Thanks to all of my family: Michael, Casey and Jeff, Chad and Lorraine, Bradley, Brooke, Addison, Andrew, and Gram. Though my immediate family has lived with this project longer, my in-laws have heard more about the ins and outs of the publication process. I’m especially grateful to Paula and Simeon Pace, Jennie R. Davis, and Hannah Atkins, who had better return the favor and thank me in a book of her own. I’ve explored Chicago and New York City with a wonderful group of peo- ple. Steph Sola, Rachel Benoit, Amy Kalbster, Ri Pierce-Grove, and Gabby Warshawer, thank you all for your help and love along the way. If I’ve written a book that interests you all, I have done my job. The Rutgers English Department is my intellectual family, and I am so grateful to all of the faculty, staff, and students there—past and present. My committee deserves particular thanks: director Elin Diamond, Meredith McGill, Matthew Buckley, Harriet Davidson, and Jackson Lears. My disser- tation writing group provided welcome intellectual community in what can otherwise be an isolating time. Thanks to Kristie Allen, Alison Shonkwiler, and Alex Socarides. Carrie Preston, Danielle Bobker, Kathy Lubey, and Liz Reich have all provided feedback, encouragement, or a combination of the two. Ben Johnson is still the best writer I know. I consider myself lucky that he’s also a wonderful reader and friend. Much of the work in this book was possible only because of the archival riches available in New York City. My thanks to the Museum of the City of [ ix ] New York; the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; and the Manuscripts and Archives Division and the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History, and Genealogy at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Not all of the work got done at those archives, so I’m also grateful for the many coffee shops where I wrote first drafts of these chapters, especially Gorilla Coffee. In spite of what Alfred Kazin says, I also thank the Bergen Street stop on the 2/3, where I still feel like I’m coming home. Since I have arrived at Auburn University, my colleagues in the English Department have all done so much to help this project toward its fruition. Hilary Wyss offered helpful advice, a sympathetic ear, and an introduction to my editor. Jim Ryan read my manuscript and talked transportation early on. Michael Frazer provided research assistance. I received funding for summer research leave through the College of Liberal Arts and the Research Cul- ture Committee. For general support, both scholarly and psychological, I thank Chase Bringardner, Rebecca Brunson, Emily Friedman, Susana Mor- ris, Erich Nunn, Kathryn Olsen, Anya Riehl, and Matt Zarnowiecki. In the past few years Twitter has become a useful venue for me to share ideas and links with other scholars of New York City. Liana Silva and Bryan Waterman have been the most generous and enthusiastic of my online collaborators. Beatrice Smedley provided a translation used in chapter 4. Carolyn de la Peña and Siva Vaidhyanathan gave me my first platform for talking about transportation and American culture in American Quarterly. I thank them for their work as coeditors of the Science/Technology/Culture series as well. Carolyn in particular has seen this project go through a num- ber of revisions; she has always pushed me to make my work more accessi- ble and more interdisciplinary, and for that I am grateful. Two anonymous readers and Cotten Seiler offered attentive notes and challenging questions. I appreciate their time and generosity. Thanks to theJournal of Modern Liter- ature for permission to reprint a revised and expanded version of my article “Subway Ride and Subway System in Hart Crane’s ‘The Tunnel,’ ” which first appeared in volume 33, number 2 (Winter 2010). I am grateful to the Univer- sity of Massachusetts Press and especially Clark Dougan, the best advocate and demystifier an author could want. Thanks are also due to Carol Betsch (a Broadway Local rider), Mary Bellino, and Amanda Heller. Finally to Paul. You are my husband and my best friend. This book is dedicated to you and to the many journeys we will take together. [ x ] acKNOWLEDGMENTS UNDER- GROUND MOVE- MENTS •••••••••••••••••••• Modern Culture on the New York City Subway “This page intentionally left blank” INTRODUCTION SuBWay STORIES •••• Stories about technology proliferate in contemporary culture. In online forums, in mass media, and in everyday conversation, Americans nar- rate their relation to the world through their machines: my smartphone makes me feel connected, perhaps too connected; my car offers freedom of movement and shields me from fellow commuters. Technologies do not inherently shape these new forms of sociability, though they do make some ways of relating easier than others. Instead, stories told about technolo- gies model the new modes of interaction they bring about. Stories bestow cultural capital on some machines, allowing them to play a symbolic role in US culture that extends beyond the sphere of their producers and con- sumers. And when they are prevalent and powerful enough, stories about technology can orient its users to the world in new ways. In Underground Movements I focus on the stories told about the New York City subway in the first half of the twentieth century. In this period, a remarkable variety of writers took up the challenge of narrating a new technology that simultaneously reshaped the consciousness of its riders [ 1 ] and the metropolis through which they moved. The underground transit system plays an outsized role in experimental writing of the time that has come to be called modernist.1 These particular texts describe and evaluate the New York subway system as a representative space for exploring the dif- ficulty of navigating the city, the commercialization of art, and the impact of immigration on local and national identity. They belong to a number of microgenres, specific forms of subway writing bound by their own aes- thetic rules; these texts isolate different elements of the subway ride and use them to embody different aspects of urban life. Although the types of liter- ature under discussion differ widely in tone, theme, and publishing venue, they all attempt to explain what difference the subway makes to particular riders.
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