Ian Frazier has a great egalitarian eye for what James Agee,
in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
called “human actuality.” In his brilliant “Hidden City,” in this week’s issue,
Frazier notices, among other specific details, “two young men, one in a hoodie
despite the heat and the other in a clean, tight white T-shirt and a black
do-rag, with the tie ends dangling;” “a single key, unattached to any chain,
key ring or other keys;” floors “like the insides of old suitcases”; “bent
window blinds”; “tragic, drooping, bright-green shower curtain”; “ivory polish
on her fingernails and toenails”; strollers (“Plastic bags of possessions drape
the stroller handles, sippy cups of juice fill the cup-holders, Burger King
paper crowns ride in the carrying racks beneath”); smell (“Breakfast had just
ended and a smell of syrup lingered in the air); Saratoga Family Inn homeless
shelter (“Fencing topped with barbed wire surrounds the building on several
sides, and large banners advertising a slip-and-fall attorney and an
auto-leasing place hang from its windowless six-story front”); sound
(“constantly you hear the tires bumping on an approach ramp to the Robert F.
Kennedy Bridge above it”); clothing (“He was wearing a pair of trousers that
appeared to be riding very low, as the style now has it, but actually they were
an optical illusion. The boxer shorts at the top of the trousers were a part of
the garment itself”); an East Harlem street (“Cardboard lay scattered here and
there and some ring-billed gulls were picking up French fries”); more sound
(“In the warm Saturday-night air the city was hivelike, humming, fabulously
lit, and rocking with low, thrilling, Daisy Buchanan-like laughter”); the
homeless (“In this restlessness, the homeless remind me of the ghostly streaks
on photos of the city from long ago, where the camera’s slow shutter speed
could capture only a person’s blurry passing”).
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