Nerdy Travelers Rejoice: A Bucket List of Literary Museums for Literary Travelers
21 AugCorrecting My Joisey Accent
28 Janimage via Harvard Dialect Study
“You’re from Joisey!” all the West Coasters would exclaim when I moved out to Los Angeles for college and told them I had come from New Jersey. That’s what I said, “New Jersey.” Not “New Joisey.” Yet they hoisted the accent upon me anyway.
My finger nails may have been a tad too long and I may have grown up spending every Saturday at the Garden State Plaza, but I definitely didn’t speak like some chick who over Aqua-Net her hair. In fact, no one I knew spoke that way.
…Well, at least I thought we didn’t. No one I knew pronounced “hamburger” like “hamboiger” or anything as nails-to-the-chalkboard as that, but when I really listened to the way my friends talked, I noticed there was maybe a slight accent to a few words. Some of my friends pronounced “water” as “wooter.” I also noticed I had a certain way of crunching words. “Orange juice” became “ornch juice.” “Drawers” became “joors.”
I was always a little sensitive about the issue of accents. As an immigrant with a thick Greek accent, my father sometimes was misunderstood by waitresses at restaurants, which infuriated me because I could understand what he was saying perfectly and when others couldn’t I believed it to be deliberate xenophobia. But it wasn’t just my father who had an accent. My mother was from Minnesota, another state beleaguered by accent stereotypes. My mother did not talk like any of the characters in Fargo, but she did say “melk” for “milk” and “tall” for “towel.” That’s how my siblings and I grew up speaking, and I made a concerted effort to rectify my speech.
Actually, the school system made a concerted effort to rectify my accent: I was put in speech therapy in elementary school. It was humiliating. I was the shyest kid in my grade—and probably the entire state—and yet the few times I opened my mouth I was punished by being singled out and removed from my normal class to have a therapist teach me how to talk “correctly.” That was enough to keep me silent throughout most of elementary school. Now, I had a real reason to fear talking and stay quiet. I was afraid that if I were to speak up, no one would be able to understand me.
In the school’s defense, I really did need speech therapy. As this eHow article on How to Speak with a New Jersey Accent teaches, I dropped all my “r”s—to the point that certain words, like “art,” became incomprehensible. My accent wasn’t just the issue though. On top of having a foreigner for a father and, let’s face it, as a Midwesterner my mom was pretty much a foreigner too, I had pretty severe hearing issues, which had impacted my speech. I had to have surgery twice as a kid to have tubes put in my ears.
I’m not sure if this was related, but a lot of what I did hear, I took literally instead of as an accent. I remember my speech therapist asking me what type of shoes I wore, and I said, “tenner shoes.” I think I knew that meant “tennis shoes,” but I remember thinking in that moment that I had definitely answered “wrong.” I felt so stupid as she questioned me if I played tennis. From then on, I knew the correct label for my shoes was “sneakers.” How could I have been so stupid as to call them tenner shoes? I taunted myself afterwards. I’d never even picked up a tennis racket. I blamed my mom. She was the one who called them that.
Worse, in 6th grade, the music teacher gave us a pop quiz on the lyrics to “The Star Spangled Banner.” When I got my test, it was clear she thought I was a horrible speller. I was relieved because this meant I got a better grade than I should have. I was also shocked that she thought someone could spell that poorly. Suddenly, I realized how “dumb” some of my classmates really must be, if I’d been given that much credit for my botched lyrics. In reality, I’d been misunderstanding lyrics the entire time. I thought “dawn’s early light” was “donzerly light.” I wasn’t sure of the exact definition of “donzerly,” but I pictured it as hazy white fireworks, since that’s what often accompanied the national anthem and seemed to coincide with what “bombs bursting in air” would’ve looked like.
So when that New York Times dialect quiz, based on the linguistics project Harvard Dialect Study, spread like wildfire over Facebook, I took it figuring it would identify me as having some random accent. But nope, it identified me as being from Newark/Paterson, Jersey City, and—somewhat inexplicably since it’s in northern California—Fremont.
Once a Jersey girl, always a Jersey girl.
What accent did you get?
Also, you might like:
- 10 Minutes from the GWB (on growing up close to NYC)
- God Has a Sense of Humor — Either That or Everything I Think I Know about Myself Is Wrong (on shyness)
- I Love Menominee: Student Speaks Endangered Language (on being silenced for speaking in one’s own language)
Jack Kerouac Dropped Out of College. So What?
27 JanIs genius born or created? By now everyone has read, or at least heard, about how Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College and went on to become the cofounder of Apple and one of the most important entrepreneurs of our time. Perhaps less known is the fact that Jobs continued to audit classes at Reed. He actually credited a calligraphy course he took as having a major impact on the Mac. When I was taking a shuttle from the San Francisco airport to my hotel out in Walnut Creek, I had a midnight conversation with a businessman who had read the biography on Jobs and told me about how the computer genius’ interest in art was fundamental to his vision for building a successful brand.
Back in September, Flavorwire posted an article called “10 Famous Authors Who Dropped Out of School.” This is what they wrote about Jack Kerouac:
In high school, Beat hero Jack Kerouac was no poet — he was a jock, star of the football team. His athletic skills won him a scholarship to Columbia University, but he and the coach didn’t get along. The two argued constantly and Kerouac was benched for most of his freshman year. Then, he cracked his tibia and, his already tenuous football career over, dropped out of school.
I love Flavorwire, and I understand that the writer was trying to keep the text short and irreverent, but I think it’s worth dissecting the often repeated line that Kerouac dropped out of Columbia University. Implicit in remarks about his football scholarship and dropping out is the suggestion that Kerouac was neither intelligent nor studious—the same way that many critics like to point to how quickly he supposedly wrote his novels. If he were a computer genius, like Steve Jobs, perhaps his craft would not be questioned, but because the arts are subjective, Kerouac’s dropping out of college is often reported more as a jab than as evidence toward his natural gifts.
To say that Kerouac was a jock and not a poet in high school undermines his academic achievements. In reality, Kerouac, who didn’t even feel completely comfortable speaking English when he went off to school (he spoke his parents’ French Canadian dialect), did so well in school that he skipped a grade. He spent a lot of time at the public library in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, voraciously reading the classics. When he was not on the football field, Kerouac was part of a roundtable discussion group on philosophy and literature. His father was a printer, and so even at a young age, Kerouac produced his own writing. Like Jobs, Kerouac did not come from money, and the scholarship he earned helped him attend the university, where he studied English under the tuition of great professors.
Kerouac left Columbia, then he returned to resume his studies, and then dropped out for good. However, like Steve Jobs, Kerouac continued his studies even after he dropped out of college. He enrolled at The New School, where he studied literature.
After Kerouac moved to Ozone Park, Queens, and holed himself up writing, his friends jokingly referred to him as “The Wizard of Ozone Park.” Do you know “The Wizard of Menlo Park” (New Jersey) was? Thomas Edison, who after only three months of formal schooling, dropped out.
***
This post has been updated. I wrote “college” when I meant to write “school,” when referring to Kerouac’s ease with English.
92-Year-Old Greek Diner Shut Its Doors in Literary Neighborhood
24 JanNinety-two-year-old Greek diner St. Clair has closed down, reports Grub Street, after learning the news from Brownstoner.
Owned by five Cypriot brothers, according to New York magazine, offered various Greek dishes such as the Greek Delight Platter, Corfu Salad, and Greek Moussaka alongside classic American dishes like The Best Baked Meatloaf and 14 Oz. new York Cut Sirloin Steak Sandwich. Brooklyn Daily provided a little history that when the diner was revamped in 1967 it was opened up as the New St. Clair by the Costa family. In 2007, they sold it to Spiro Katehis, who also owns the Carroll Gardens Classic Diner. The Greek diner was at the corner of Smith and Atlantic in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.
In The Town and the City, Jack Kerouac housed the parents of his main character in Brooklyn and mentioned the Boerum Hill neighborhood. Of course back then, the neighborhood hadn’t gone through its yuppie gentrification—Kerri Russell and Michelle Williams have called it home—and was known as South Brooklyn or North Gowanus.
Considering the establishment had already opened in 1920 and Kerouac was in the area in the 1940s and ‘50s, it’s possible—though not proven—that he could have stopped in the St. Clair Diner.
The neighborhood is famously home to another writer: Jonathan Lethem, who told the New York Sun, “’My image of the writer came from people like Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac.’” When he was younger, Letham hitchhiked to California and worked at used bookstores. In 2011, he was the Roy E. Disney Professor in Creative Writing at Pomona College, where I studied literature and Classical Greek.
Road Trip: Hitchhiking to the Mission
24 Nov
By the time my poor bus rolled into Carmel, the day was fading and the shops had closed their adorable doors. Music from a live concert rose up out of the heart of the main shopping plaza, and the moon made his appearance even though the sun hadn’t quite set yet. I was a little disappointed not to be able to stop into the cheese shop that the wine guide back at the winery had recommended, but I was intent on getting a little culture out of the trip. Man cannot live on cheese alone. I set off to visit the Carmel mission.
I was a little annoyed that I’d paid all this money for a tour that basically amounted to the driver talking over the intercom as he drove the bus and then sleeping while we wandered off on our own into the unknown. That was the point when I actually needed a tour guide. I didn’t need someone to tell me to look out the window because by golly there’s a strawberry field. I needed someone to physically walk me to locations because I’m for someone who loves to travel I’m notoriously bad with directions, and I hate wasting time getting lost when there are things I want to see! I asked the driver to point me in the direction of the Carmel mission, and he told me the twosome up ahead of me were also headed there and honked the bus horn at them so they’d wait for me.
I awkwardly approached, not knowing if I was encroaching on some romantic rendezvous. As it turned out, they were ex-brother and sister-in-law. The woman had married and divorced the guy’s brother. They couple had been divorced for many, many years now, but the woman and the brother had remained good friends and travel companions. Hm… was there maybe something more there? No. He’s gay and in a committed relationship, and she is currently in a serious relationship. They just like to travel together.
Alrighty then! Onward ho! (Actually, I found the relationship backstory out on the return trip.)
The woman once been given a beautiful painting of the San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo and always wanted to visit it. We set off down the road, the driver having told us it was only about a ten-minute walk. That was a lie. As we were trying to figure out which way to head, a woman in an SUV pulled up and asked us if we wanted a ride. Now, if you’ve read my “Nightmare of a Trip” post, you know that I’m well versed in the dangers of hitchhiking, but I figured I was with two other people. Plus you had to have seen the woman in the SUV. She was skinny with bleached blonde hair and wore these ginormous heels and what may have been a dalmatian-fur coat. I couldn’t tell if she was actually old or if her skin was damaged from too much suntanning. We were grateful to her, though, as she took time out to give us strangers a ride.
The San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, like all the shops, had already closed, so we could only peer in over the fence. It was a beauty! Established in 1771, the Community of the Carmel Mission is a working church. The Basilica Church is a registered National Historic Landmark and there are five museums on the grounds.
Of course, the bus also made a stop at the Carmel mission when we left the area, but we didn’t have time to get off the bus at that point, so I’m glad I ventured off to enjoy its peaceful presence.
I’m not sure which mission he’s referring to, but in Big Sur Jack Kerouac writes of Cody, the character based on Neal Cassady, saying:
“Now dont walk too fast, it’s time to stroll along like we used to do remember sometimes on our daysoff on the railroad, or walkin across that Third and Townsend tar like you said and the time we watched the sun go down so perfect holy purple over that Mission cross–Yessir, slow and easy, lookin at this gone valley…”
Road Trip: Monterey
19 NovMost people associate John Steinbeck with Monterey. Many of his famous novels, including Cannery Row, were set in Monterey. Not surprisingly, there are many tributes to him in the toursity little town.
Jack Kerouac also wrote about Monterey. One of the most beautiful passages about Monterey in Big Sur is:
But it is beautiful especially to see up ahead north a vast expanse of curving seacoast with inland mountains dreaming under slow clouds, like a scene of ancient Spain or properly really like a scene of the real essentially Spanish California, the old Monterey pirate coast right there, you can see what the Spaniards must’ve thought when they came around the bend in their magnificent sloopies and saw all that dreaming fatland beyond the seashore whitecap dormat–Like the land of gold–The old Monterey and Big Sur and Santa Cruz magic….
Road Trip: Garlic Capital of the World
16 NovThe first road trip I ever took to San Francisco was with my best friend on spring break during college. As we were driving up from LA, she pointed out Gilroy, telling me that that’s where all the garlic is grown. She told me they even had a garlic festival!
Here’s a bit about Gilroy, California:
Gilroy is well known for its garlic crop and for the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, featuring various garlicky foods, including garlic ice cream. … Gilroy’s nickname is “Garlic Capital of the World,” although Gilroy does not lead the world in garlic production. While garlic is grown in Gilroy, its nickname comes from the fact that Gilroy Foods processes more garlic than any other factory in the world; most pickled, minced, and powdered garlic come from Gilroy.
Garlic ice cream?! Uh, no thanks. Although I have had olive oil ice cream, and it was amazing. I do love garlic, though. So naturally when my recent road trip from San Francisco to Monterey and back passed by Gilroy, I had to get out and take some photographs.
If Jack Kerouac’s road trip sustenance was all about apple pie, perhaps mine was about gaaaaaaahhhhhrlic!
If you have any good recipes for dishes with garlic, let me know!
Road Trip: The Salad Bowl of the World
15 NovOne of the reasons I was excited to travel the California coast from San Francisco to Monterey was because we’d pass Salinas. John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac wrote about Salinas Valley. Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was set in Salinas. In 1960, Kerouac published a piece called “The Vanishing American Hobo” in Holiday magazine, which in part said:
I myself was a hobo but only of sorts, as you see, because I knew some day my literary efforts would be rewarded by social protection — I was not a real hobo with no hope ever except that secret eternal hope you get sleeping in empty boxcars flying up the Salinas Valley in hot January sunshine full of Golden Eternity towards San Jose where mean-looking old bo’s ‘ll look at you from surly lips and offer you something to eat and a drink too — down by the tracks or in the Guadaloupe Creek bottom.
Kerouac also wrote about Salinas in Big Sur. Even though it was in Selma, California (called Sabinal in the novel) — the Raisin Capital of the World — that Kerouac wrote about picking crops with “the Mexican girl,” Terry, in On the Road, I imagine it to be very much like Salinas.
The Salinas Valley, which begins south of San Ardo, and runs all the way to Monterey Bay, is known as “the Salad Bowl of the World.” Most of the green salad produce you eat in the US comes from the Salinas Valley. Named during California’s Spanish colonial period, Salinas means a salty lake or marsh. The climate and growing conditions make the valley particularly fertile.
I saw signs promising 7 avocados for $1. Do you know how much I pay for an avocado here in New York City? $2 for a single avocado! I was super excited — “stoked” to use the lingo I picked up while living in Cali (yes, people really talk like that there). However, in keeping with the everything-going-awry theme of the trip, we did not get to make the stop because our bus had broken down earlier on the trip and we were already two hours behind schedule. I took these photos from the window of the bus.