The City As Character
Having lived in cities for many years, their uncompromising presence has loomed large in my writing. I’m conscious of the literary precedent of using the modern city as character, and it is one which is preoccupying me more and more recently. In London Fields, Martin Amis depicted London’s many layers- its grimy yet labyrinthine quality. In ‘How The Dead Live’ Will Self brilliantly captured the sense of absence in cities, what Milan Kundera called the sense that ‘life is elsewhere’, when he described a world in which the dead go to live in a suburb in Crouch End. Perhaps more evocatively for a fan of the 1930’s such as me, in The New York Trilogy Paul Auster used the genre of detective fiction as a metaphor for his characters existential unease and urban alienation. In the three narratives men were ostracized from the rat race while they undertook mysterious tasks for unknown benefactors. Auster’s characters were therefore placed in a position whereby they could dispassio...