Hitchens, on the meaning of bohemia and the West Village
Christopher Hitchens recalls bohemia’s eclipses in London, Paris, and San Francisco, and worries that New York’s West Village may soon become another victim of the skyscraper’s shadow. The loss would be immeasurable.
[T]ry picturing American culture without the contribution of this unique square mile. Inter alia, you would have to subtract Bob Dylan and the Cafe Wha?, Norman Mailer and The Village Voice, Isadora Duncan, John Reed and Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Beats, the gay movement and Christopher Street and the Stonewall Inn, Lauren Bacall as “Miss Greenwich Village of 1942,” Eugene O’Neill, Dylan Thomas at the White Horse Tavern, Dawn Powell and Djuna Barnes. In his book which has the wonderful title Republic of Dreams, Ross Wetzsteon managed to evoke what he admitted was sometimes “a cult of carefree irresponsibility, but in the service of transcendental ideas.” That could be Bohemia defined.
The loss of a cultural beacon like the West Village will make the future a bit dimmer
because on the day when everywhere looks like everywhere else we shall all be very much impoverished, and not only that but—more impoverishingly still—we will be unable to express or even understand or depict what we have lost.
photo credit: scratch n sniff
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