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| By
Gennady Sheyner and Dario Thuburn |
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| A PLACE FOR ROMANCE and intrigue, a backdrop, a metaphor, Central Park has served as inspiration for generations of writers and poets.
In Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest novel, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” (2005), the park is the setting for a hunt for clues by the precocious 9-year-old narrator Oskar Schell. This prefaces a larger search for answers that he embarks on after his father’s death in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Following the tragedy, in Oskar’s imagination, the Central Park Reservoir could hold all the tears of New Yorkers who cry themselves to sleep.
The bedtime story that his father once told him about a sixth borough where Central Park used to be becomes a recurring theme in the book. The proof that this sixth borough existed, says his father in the story, is that the lovers’ names etched onto a tree close to the carousel do not appear in Manhattan telephone directories.
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“By the time the park found its current resting place, every single one
of the children had
fallen asleep, and the park was a mosaic of their dreams.”
—
Jonathan Safran Foer,
from “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” |
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As the sixth borough starts floating off, Central Park is dragged into Manhattan with giant hooks. Children can lie on the grass as the park is moved, as fireworks explode overhead and the Philharmonic plays its heart out.
“The fireworks sprinkled down, dissolving in the air just before they reached the ground, and the children were pulled, one millimeter and one second at a time, into Manhattan and adulthood. By the time the park found its current resting place, every single one of the children had fallen asleep, and the park was a mosaic of their dreams.” |
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Literary characters have long been attracted to the park.
Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” (1925), embraces Jordan Baker, a slender golfer in Gatsby’s milieu, as the two ride a carriage through the park in the twilight. In Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1950) the park is again a place for romance. The narrator falls under the spell of Holly Golightly as they stroll by the boathouse in the fall.
Their wistful romance culminates and ends when the two go horse-riding through the park after Holly has told him that she is leaving for Brazil to marry another.
“Suddenly, watching the tangled colors of Holly’s hair flash in the red-yellow leaf light, I loved her enough to forget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.”
Central Park affects Holden Caulfield, the moody hero of J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” (1951), in quite a different way.
On his wanderings through New York in his red hunting hat, Holden gets curious about where the ducks from the Pond go during the winter. Their resilience in an inhospitable environment matches Holden’s perception of himself and the fact they will return – the cyclical turn of nature – gives him solace after his brother Allie’s death.
Holden leaves readers with a final scene of his sister Phoebe going round and round on the carousel in the rain after he has decided he will not leave town after all. |
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