Dear Jim,
Well, I hope you’re right about Boston. The city’s literary reputation has been in decline ever since William Dean Howells left for New York; I doubt that Cornel West’s departure for Princeton will diminish the city’s academic reputation in like measure, but you never know.
The cultures of Washington and Boston are, of course, quite distinct. The intellectual life of Washington revolves around the intricacies of policy (at best) and the jostling of personalities (at worst); I think of the president in Henry Adams’ Democracy, a dead puppet shaking the hands of his dinner guests. The intellectual life of Boston revolves around the creation of ideas (at best) and the repetition of ideologies (at worst); I think of e.e. cummings shaking his fist at the “Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls … knitting for the is it Poles?” If Washington has too many politicians, Boston may have a few too many academics. As for suburbia and car culture, it bears noting that the Boston urban area is far more suburban than most, and that the city has suffered its share from the automobile. Back in the 1950s, Robert Lowell was complaining that “Parking spaces luxuriate like civic/ sandpiles in the heart of Boston” while “yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting/ as they cropped up tons of mush and grass/ to gouge their underworld garage.” (Not to mention those “giant finned cars” that “nose forward like fish.”)
I think it’s hard to compare one city’s ambience with another these days, since cities are becoming more and more alike. This isn’t just a matter of homogenization; this isn’t altogether a bad thing: public spaces and poor neighborhoods are in somewhat better condition than they were 10 years ago. Meanwhile, one can find the same pedestrian malls and Internet cafes from Raleigh to Pittsburgh. I used to marvel that Brooklyn was a city with two and a half million people and no Tower Records; but now there’s a Starbucks and a Ben & Jerry’s around the corner from me and who knows how many more to come. Boston and Cambridge may be a little different in this regard: When they opened a Starbucks in Central Square a few years ago, there were actual protest demonstrations out on Massachusetts Avenue. I believe they have since subsided.
Til soon,
Alex
