Down & Outbound: The Hub

Train Logistics and Coincidences

By coincidence last week, I stumbled on to a movie and a book where trains play a prominent role in the storyline. They even share an educational component:

Wim Wenders, The American Friend.  Wenders directed this 1977 German-French film starring Dennis Hopper and a young Bruno Ganz the late, great actor who portrayed Adolf Hitler in “Downfall”, but is currently well known for all those Hitler memes.

"The American Friend" is set in Hamburg and Paris, and Ganz plays a dying man who is recruited indirectly by Hopper to be an assassin. Ganz carries out his first assignment in the Paris subway system and then with assistance from Hopper, he tosses a couple of men off the train while traveling from Munich to Hamburg. Later after the deed, Hopper poses a math problem to Ganz over beers, “If you throw a gangster out of train going eighty miles an hour, and then you throw a second one, (and you know the distance between the two discarded bodies), how much time passes between the two events if the train doesn’t change speeds?”

W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants. The German-born Sebald (1994-2001) is one of my favorite writers over the past few years. Sebald often includes trains and train stations in his narratives. Black and white photographs – like they came out of an old family album – are always part of a Sebald book.  One of the chapters  entitled “Paul Bereyter” is about a retired schoolteacher who ends his life on a December night in 1984 by laying down on a curve of the railroad track. (Shown here)

The narrator is one of Bereyter’s students and he recalls how much “railways had always meant a great deal to him (Bereyter) – perhaps he felt they (railways) were headed for death. Timetables and directories, all the logistics of railways, had at times become an obsession with him…I thought of the stations, tracks, goods, depots and signal boxes that Paul had so often drawn on the blackboard and which we  had to copy into our exercise books as carefully as we could.”

Readers of Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire can appreciate how these two works might have appealed to me.  The main character of D & O works in “mass transit counter-intelligence” and writes in the form of a “personal journal of case narratives which he hopes to eventually turn into a television script.”  However, the similarities end there, as I am no Wim Wenders or W.G. Sebald. The last sentence sounds like a possible book blurb.

Reading Bits and Other Followups

A few things I have been reading lately seemed relevant:

Barely Maps

Back in September, I mentioned that Down & Outbound became a Kickstarter supporter for a book project by Peter Gorman entitled Barely Maps. The project is a personal account of the cyclist and graphic designer's 11,000 mile bike trip across the United States and southern Canada. The end result is the gorgeously printed Barely Maps: 100 Minimalist Maps (2019). It's similar to an artbook with dozens of illustrations including a set of Intersections, where Gorman outlines the quirky, weird intersections of select U.S. cities. You can read a complete review of the book on my companion thebookshopper.org blog or visit Gorman's website at barelymaps.com. 

Democracy and Public Services (Transportation)

Astra Taylor's book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone (2019) is a multidisciplinary and historical look at the where democracy stands as we  the first quarter of the new century.  Although you could say things are looking a little bleak for democracy, Taylor reminds us that "democracy begins where you live" including protecting the environment. She writes:

"Ultimately, more than 350 cities announced plans to break with national policy and honor the international accord. No longer advising people to go back to the land, environmentalists increasingly recognize the role cities must play if they hope to achieve sustainability Several earths would be required for everyone to live in a suburban home with a two-car garage, which means dense cities - compact, efficiently designed, and public service rich -- will be crucial to livable low-carbon future. "(Taylor is citing the work of Daniel Adana Cohen.)

And Ending on a Lighter Note

A couple of weeks ago around midnight on a Saturday night, my eye caught a "vehicle" scooting down my street in Decatur (GA). I live on a busy street with lots of traffic and even at that late hour automobiles pass by regularly. The vehicle had no lights or reflectors, but a large, older man was wearing white sweatpants (or pajamas?), a jacket and  stocking cap was tootling along one of the lanes.  I feared the worse for the scooter rider or an unsuspecting motorist  and called the non-emergency police number.  The next morning the scooter was abandoned a block away and it turned out it was a motorized shopping cart from a Walmart store which is about 3/4 of a mile from where I live.  You cannot underestimate how people like their scooters.

 

Black & White Photos of Commuters

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the famous photographer Walker Evans took black and white photographs of riders on the New York City subway. The book Many Are Called includes 89 of these photographs with an introductory essay by James Agee. It was not published until 1966 because Evans was initially concerned that since these passengers were photographed secretly without their permission, there were  issues surrounding privacy and worries about possible legal problems. Moreover, the idea itself was not particularly well-received at the time by publishers and galleries and was mothballed along with Agee's introductory essay until Evans began to revive the project in 1958 (Agee died in 1955).

Agee immediately understood the significance of Evans' s work because riding a subway as a commuter  (even today as then) is one of the few times that people let their guards down revealing "a wound or nakedness" that we often conceal from others. Until I studied the words and pictures of  Many Are Called  I didn't realize that this is the underlying reason that people do not like to be stared at on the subway. You should always avert your eyes -- gaze at the oracle that is your cell phone, read a book or peer into the dark tunnels instead. Avoid looking at people when they are the most weary and vulnerable.

 

 

 

Down & Outbound at Book Festival

In  a rare public appearance, discounted copies of my book Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire will be available for perusing and sale at the Root City booth #528 at the Decatur Book Festival being held September 2nd and 3rd.  This is your opportunity to experience  a book about the absurdities of public transportation, which has been specifically designed for those who ride buses and subway trains. (You can read it with one hand. See video below.)  At the booth, which will also have cards, notebooks and other writerly accessories, you can experience how Down & Outbound's soft plastic comb massages the tender spot between your thumb and index finger while you read. This book tickles.

"Will the reclusive D & O author be available?" you ask.

Only late Sunday afternoon at the Baptist Church venue, but not as an author but as a Festival volunteer during the Ernie Johnson appearance. Maybe I can get the famed sportscaster to hold my book. Hmmm. Good idea.