The Biology of Luck by Jacob M. Appel

Author:Jacob M. Appel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Elephant Rock Publications, Inc.
Published: 2013-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

BROOKLYN BRIDGE

Nearly all of New York’s treasured literary luminaries, during some particularly vexing season preceding their apotheoses, have contemplated premature self-censorship in the torrential eddies of the East River. The waterway itself plays an integral role in this rite of passage. The jagged floes of ice that choke the harbor in late fall and early spring foster the appearance of glacial progress, of the soft lap of a gentle stream, while the aquamarine glimmer of the surface at midsummer transforms one of the world’s most unforgiving currents into a rural swimming hole. To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city has done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.

Larry Bloom, the paradigm of the despondent young upstart for whom the structure was commissioned, has traversed the pedestrian causeway on exactly 217 occasions. Every Wednesday for more than two years, at approximately half past noon, he leads a detachment of pleasure seekers, fortified with optimism and bottled water, through the intricate web of suspension cables that supports the majestic span; and every Wednesday at half past one, having conquered several poorly defended corners of Brooklyn Heights, he escorts his merry band back into Manhattan to celebrate its victory. Larry is certainly not the most experienced docent on the circuit. He is probably not classified among the most engaging. He is, without a doubt, the only tour leader among the hundreds of underemployed graduate students and retired college librarians and itinerant travel writers piloting foreigners over the channel who can state with absolute precision the number of times he has crossed between boroughs on foot. This anomaly does not reflect some flaw of character, a pernicious compulsion toward the minute and irrelevant. Larry does not double check gas ranges; he feels relatively comfortable in crowds and confined spaces; he does not even recall his mother’s date of birth. Yet for Larry, each encounter with the massive pylons and Gothic arches of Colonel Roebling’s masterpiece has come to stand for another chapter in his tribute to Starshine. The bridge crossings were his motivation, his benchmark.

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