A Tale of Two Cities
Apr. 8th, 2008 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogIn the past 24 hours, I have finished the last two works by Charles Baxter presented in two different media. Also, set in two of the perhaps differentest U.S. places I could imagine.
Feast of Love, which we experienced via the Morgan Freeman film adaptation, is set in Portland, Oregon. I have never been there, but some dear Friends of mine old and new have moved to or from it in recent years, and since my teens, I have had an unrequited fascination for the Pacific Northwest. It always seemed like a cool place. Baxter, Freeman and friends all make it out to be exactly such.
Baxter's newest novel, The Soul Thief, is set primarily right here in Buffalo, and in places that a UB student of the 70s (as he was) or 80s (as I was) would instantly recognize and bond with: Allentown, the Albright Knox, Delaware Park and the coolness of Hertel Avenue. It is in so many ways the anti-Portland when it comes to hipness, and yet he nails the Here as well as his earlier work felt faithful to my imaginings of the There.
There is also one single sentence in the latter work that will blow you away. I'm not telling you what it is.
Go. Read. (Or in the earlier case, watch.)
Feast of Love, which we experienced via the Morgan Freeman film adaptation, is set in Portland, Oregon. I have never been there, but some dear Friends of mine old and new have moved to or from it in recent years, and since my teens, I have had an unrequited fascination for the Pacific Northwest. It always seemed like a cool place. Baxter, Freeman and friends all make it out to be exactly such.
Baxter's newest novel, The Soul Thief, is set primarily right here in Buffalo, and in places that a UB student of the 70s (as he was) or 80s (as I was) would instantly recognize and bond with: Allentown, the Albright Knox, Delaware Park and the coolness of Hertel Avenue. It is in so many ways the anti-Portland when it comes to hipness, and yet he nails the Here as well as his earlier work felt faithful to my imaginings of the There.
There is also one single sentence in the latter work that will blow you away. I'm not telling you what it is.
Go. Read. (Or in the earlier case, watch.)