----- Original Message -----
From: "Halvard Johnson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: I said he was my favorite literary character...
> Hey, I know that walk. I wasn't born on 14th St., but I did
> live there (well, at 56 7th Ave., 19H, just south of W. 14th
> St.) from approx. my third year through my eighth year. Cold
> as hell it was some times of year. That would have been
> several years after your father's walk.
>
> Hal
>
> ". . . the old is too old and the new is too old."
> --Gertrude Stein
>
I see Pynchon's point about the "width and tallness" of the wind along 14th
St. But as a native and ever-homesick Chicagoan I must say that, for sheer
intensity of Venturi effect, any east-west street in the Loop, between State
St. and Michigan Avenue, beats 14th St. by a mile. Plus the tendency for
that wind to change direction in an instant - off the prairie, then off the
Lake - without losing speed. Carried me and my umbrella a block once when I
was ten.
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