''There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes..."

[ish mailian]

''There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves
as Indian isles by coral reefs -- commerce surrounds it with her surf.
Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is
the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by
breezes, which in a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at
the crowds of water-gazers there.

''Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do
you see?''


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

American Literary Regionalism in a Global Age

by Philip Joseph <http://lsupress.org/authors/detail/philip-joseph/>

In this distinctive book, Philip Joseph considers how regional literature
can remain relevant in a modern global community. Why, he asks, should we
continue to read regionalist fiction in an age of expanding international
communications and increasing nonlocal forms of affiliation? With this
question as a guide, Joseph places the regionalist tradition of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the center of a contemporary
conversation about community.

Part of the challenge, Joseph shows, is to distinguish between versions of
regionalism that speak nostalgically to modern readers and those that might
enter actively into a more progressive collective dialogue. Examining the
works of well-known writers including Hamlin Garland, Abraham Cahan, Willa
Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, and William Faulkner, Joseph argues that these
regionalist authors share a vision of local communities in open discourse
with the external world—capable of shaping public thought and policy and
also of benefiting from the knowledge and experiences of outsiders. Their
fiction depicts a range of localities, from Jewish American neighborhoods
and midwest farming communities to southern African American towns and
southwestern mixed-race parishes. Their characters are often associated
with the literary-artistic process, a method stressing open-ended critique
that—unlike journalistic, philosophical, or legal processes—ensures open
dialogue.





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“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide
under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath
the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and
beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished
shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal
cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying
on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile
earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a
strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean
surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular
Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the
half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst
never return!”
*― Herman Melville
<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1624.Herman_Melville>, Moby Dick
<http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2409320>*
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