Jonathan Raban has some choice thoughts on Seattle, his adopted hometown. From the current issue of The New York Review of Books:
Twenty years after following a woman to Seattle, the English writer Jonathan Raban is still unsure if the rainy city with its occasional glimpse of Mount Rainier is the place he was meant to call home. He likes the big trees [YEP], the “raw and bloody” sunsets [YEP YEP], and the erratic tides—the “wateriness” of the place [YEP YEP YEP]. But some things about the city irritate him—the way dinner parties are organized, for one thing. There are too few, in Raban’s view. Invitations go out weeks in advance [SO TRUE]. The guests don’t really know each other. Table talk tends toward the “serial monologue,” not the lively exchanges over “national politics, new books and plays, [and] salacious gossip” that Raban prefers. [WHO TALKS ABOUT PLAYS?]
Seattle, Raban found, is a city of exercise fanatics and early risers [HEY, THAT'S OK]. Yawns appear soon after dessert and everyone is back on the street before ten. [COFFEE MAKES LIFE WORTH LIVING]
Seattle can be a rainy, dismal city, wrapped in fog [ACTUALLY, NOT FOGGY], too busy to remember what lies all around, but it has its glories. Sometimes, down at the end of one of Seattle’s streets, where the city ends and the water begins, Raban sees the wilder world he came for—”the faint plume in the air, like a twist of smoke from a dying campfire, where an orca is blowing.” Raban betrays no sigh of regret. He is content with water’s message. “That’s…how I want it on my own tombstone, please,” he writes. “Came to Wash. 1990.”
Seattle, Raban found, is a city of exercise fanatics and early risers [HEY, THAT'S OK]. Yawns appear soon after dessert and everyone is back on the street before ten. [COFFEE MAKES LIFE WORTH LIVING]
Seattle can be a rainy, dismal city, wrapped in fog [ACTUALLY, NOT FOGGY], too busy to remember what lies all around, but it has its glories. Sometimes, down at the end of one of Seattle’s streets, where the city ends and the water begins, Raban sees the wilder world he came for—”the faint plume in the air, like a twist of smoke from a dying campfire, where an orca is blowing.” Raban betrays no sigh of regret. He is content with water’s message. “That’s…how I want it on my own tombstone, please,” he writes. “Came to Wash. 1990.”
We like it here. It's cozy at home in the evenings.
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