{"id":179,"date":"2013-12-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2013\/12\/26\/post-172-in-new-york-city-part-vi-sherman-mccoy\/"},"modified":"2013-12-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T00:00:00","slug":"post-172-in-new-york-city-part-vi-sherman-mccoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2013\/12\/26\/post-172-in-new-york-city-part-vi-sherman-mccoy\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-172: In New York City (Part VI, The Ghost of Sherman McCoy)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Previous Post: Part V, “Under the Christmas Tree Like It’s 1999”<\/strong><\/font><\/a> <\/div>\n
A Manhattan street scene: <\/div>\n
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Notice that most people are stylishly dressed (except the dark man in blue). Typical Manhattan<\/em>, I guess.

<\/span><\/span>Another stylish thing to do is to buy Apple products, of course. In front of the enormous underground Apple Store, we saw yet another group of people recording some video footage. Look in the center rear of this photo: <\/div>\n
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For a TV show? For a movie? A commercial?\n<\/div>\n
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Even Manhattan’s unexpectedly-elegant cathedrals, as below, seem lifted from a movie (a European movie, even): <\/div>\n
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Protestant Episcopal church (a cathedral, really), Manhattan <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Sherman McCoy<\/strong> (of Park Avenue), in the novel Bonfire of the Vanities,<\/em> described attending one of these Protestant churches. He sent his daughter to its daycare program. I read it in 2013 (bought in a used bookstore in Itaewon, Seoul).

<\/span><\/span> I couldn’t help but think of that novel frequently, strolling around “White Manhattan” (as author Tom Wolfe calls it).<\/span><\/span>
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Bonfire of the Vanities<\/strong><\/em> is a tragedy. It comes to pass that everybody calls for Sherman McCoy’s blood. (It may as well have been, “Crucify him!!”) A multi-ethnic feeding frenzy. The various antagonists’ “vanity” lead each to pile-on poor ol’ Sherman, for all different reasons. All are united, but only to the extent that Get The Wasp!<\/em>\u00a0 can unify. Sherman’s entire world falls apart. Nearly everyone deserts him. He ends up in the prison system for a crime he didn’t commit.<\/p>\n

Bonfire of the Vanities<\/em> is a clear allegory, as I read it, for the dispossession of the once-dominant WASPs of New York City (Wolfe usually renders the word as ‘Wasp’). Sherman McCoy represents WASP-New-York, or WASP-America. Wolfe makes clear, in the novel, that their ‘dispossession’ is partly their own fault, as Sherman is a flawed man, too.<\/p>\n

Walking around Manhattan in the 2010s, one sees of ethnic assertiveness all around. From all groups, it really seems, except<\/em> any White-Protestants. Just like in Sherman McCoy’s universe, they are a group disallowed from collective identity, only defined in negative terms!

<\/span><\/span>One could be forgiven for thinking there are no “WASPs” left. <\/div>\n

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Are<\/em> there any WASPs left in NYC?<\/strong>

The 2010 Census has it that<\/span><\/span> Manhattan is 48% White Non-Hispanic<\/a>, a rate that been steady for decades. Manhattan is probably only 5-10% White-Protestant<\/strong> [Whites of at-least-nominal Protestant affiliation\/background). (Wiki says Manhattan is 20% Jewish<\/a> alone; there must be at least an equal number of White-Catholics there, and 48-20-20=8).

<\/span><\/span>This low ‘WASP’-share must rise substantially in certain neighborhoods, including ol’ Sherman’s Park Avenue. Likewise, it must plummet in the “outer boroughs” of today (except Staten Island, where my mother went to college many years ago). I see that New York City as a whole, all boroughs, is down to 33% White<\/a> today, of which a large share are Jewish, and so on. NYC as a whole is probably <5% WASP<\/strong>, then.

<\/span>M<\/span>y friend T.A. (from Kazakhstan) described to meriding subway trains in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx and his surprise at the trains being bereft of a single stereotypical ‘White-American’ face.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n
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Bonfire of the Vanities<\/em> is a brilliant novel. I’d call it the Great American Novel. It seems to me that it catches the quintessence of what today’s USA, as I have know it, is all about. It was written around the time of my birth.\n<\/div>\n
<\/span>Next Post: Part VII, Modern Art<\/strong><\/font><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
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Previous Post: Part V, “Under the Christmas Tree Like It’s 1999” A Manhattan street scene: . Read More Notice that most people are stylishly dressed (except the dark man in blue). Typical Manhattan, I guess.Another stylish thing to do is to buy Apple products, of course. In front of the enormous underground Apple Store, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}