Craptacular writing day ... but you get a picture of an historic landmark

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in the Lower East Side

The old church caught the dying light of day, but the ringing of its bells had caught Aedan’s attention. The cross was small, as if the building itself defined its purpose—this is a house of the Lord, you knew it and felt it without being told. The granite walls towered over the streets, but the tenements--rising with the stability and audacity of card houses--hemmed the cathedral in on all sides. The cleaner residents among them could be accepted as parishioners, but the majority could only accept the trickle of charity that leaked into the neighborhood. Aedan hadn’t entered the churchyard in years. When they moved downtown after Seamus returned from the War, his mother attempted to restructure their lives around the church. Aedan only remembered a few stories of the Bible ...

His father said she was buried there. Kyla believed this, and insisted on stopping outside the gates to greet their mother, ask her about heaven, cry a bit. But Aedan knew better. The man his father had paid to handle his mother’s body had no connection with St. Patrick’s, nor any parish. For all he knew, his mother had been dumped in the East River, and drifted out to sea just as easily as she’d come.

Has anyone seen the bridge? (Where's that confounded bridge?)

Really, the only thoughts on the story I had today concerned how to maintain the construction of Brooklyn Bridge at the center of the story, or at least, as an essential context and narrative force. There are scenes in the caisson I have yet to really imagine, but that setting was the impetus for the entire project. What happens down there? Who’s down there? What does one think of it? And then of course, there are the effects: income to spend, rivalries with other workmen, the exhaustion physical labor, and the invisible danger of caisson’s disease. Aedan meets Jim there, but who else? He comes down with a bout of the disease—and meets Dr. Smith, his mentor for a life away from the streets. He gains his income from there—how he can support his sister, and how he can piss his life away at saloons and with hookers. 

And in a larger sense Brooklyn Bridge is a symbol of rising American prosperity and ingenuity and grandeur and industrial might. But it’s built on the labor of the working class, many of them immigrants after a dream or just survival. This is a story of survival and desperation after all. 

But first I need to get back to the Bridge. It is the foundation of the story. I need the research and sense of the Bridge to write confidently about it—the construction site, the operation, the workings underground. And what was the impression of it at the time? What would it mean to someone in New York only casually familiar with the project? The Bridge is a portal to developing Aedan the character. Why does he choose a legitimate line of work over crime? Why does he stick through with it? What happens when the shifts get shorter and less frequent? Is he there when Washington Roebling collapses? What happens with the worker's strike? The strike, and Aedan's involvement, has the potential to be a climactic event. And knowing the Bridge is the start.

Considerations

Recently, while walking the streets of New York, I’ve become distracted by the notion of depicting a duality of city life—as apparent now as then (1872): the prosperity and the poverty. In the span of a minute, across from Macy’s—an extremely recognizable and successful brand, founded in this city in 1858—I walked by a disheveled middle-aged man shuffling down the sidewalk with an armful of cardboard, another man eating greasy Chinese food with chopsticks, a sign propped against his knees begging for handouts, and then another man asleep while sitting, his trumpet quiet at his side. How can someone obviously with musical talented be sleeping in a subway tunnel? How can these coincide with tourists and prospering businesses—and how has this not changed? I’m not wondering how I can change any of this. Yes, I could start volunteering, and maybe bring relief to a few individuals for a few hours. Or, I could join a movement railing against capitalism, or the deficiencies in our welfare/outreach systems (state, religious, non-profit, etc.) Selfishly perhaps, I’m really just concerned with how to depict this two-sided coin in my book. In a film it would be rather easy (the difficulty there would be to do it with subtlety). But how do I do it in writing without being completely explicit about it? This has nothing to do with character or plot or theme—those big issues. Or does it? There’s something there … the conflict and tension between the rising city and the squalor of the streets. And that it’s just as evident and relevant now as then. I can show it then, and speak to it now. 

A bit of Chapter 1

Padraic entered the room. It felt colder than on the street outside, and he wondered how that was possible. He would have liked to have spoken to his uncle first, but the bearded man lying on the table in the center of the room seemed indisposed and unreachable. “Aedan,” he said, embracing his cousin. And while the taller man’s lean arms wrapped around him, Padraic could not help but notice the protruding ribcage beneath Aedan's shirt. “And … ?” Padraic hesitated as he approached Kyla, looking to Aedan for her forgotten name.

            “Kyla,” said Aedan, as he reached for a chair to offer to their first guest in years.

            “Good morning to you, Kyla,” Padraic said, removing his cap and bowing slightly. “How are you?” 'What a foolish question,' he thought. 'Can’t you see how this freezing child starves, while her father drinks his life away?'

Where to (re)start? The Brooklyn Bridge novel redux

Charlotte lowered the revolver to her side. Aedan clutched at her hand and the gun slipped from it, clattering against the floor. The sound, more than his sudden movement, startled her; but Charlotte stood rooted the floorboards. She should have fled out of fear, but something held her there.
            Squeezing her hand tenderly, he pressed it against his chest—his heart—where a moment before she had aimed her weapon. She reached out her free hand and Aedan anticipated a slap across the side of his head. But rather, Charlotte caressed his ruddy cheek, the eyelets of her lace gloves catching on his stubble, producing a rasping sound heard only by him. But, when they passed just below his chin, her fingers curled into a small fist hidden from his sight.

Breakneck Ridge

The smell of honeysuckle and heat greets you at the Breakneck Ridge train stop; a quarter-of-the-way up the Hudson Valley, half the Metro North train empties out beside the track. Day-hikers of all kinds, united in the belief that the first of June--sun-drenched, humid, and glorious already at 10am--should not be wasted in the City.

The Brooklyn Bridge novel

In the winter of 2010, I first heard about Isambard Kingdom Brunel--a kick-ass Victorian civil engineer with an equally kick-ass name. In the 1830s, 40s and 50s he constructed bridges and railways across England, designed the largest ship in the world, and assisted his father with the first tunnel under the Thames (or any river, for that matter.) This rather expensive tunnel was initially for pedestrians and tourists, and, of course, soon became home to a Dickensian cast of peddlers, pickpockets, and prostitutes. I thought, "Hey, that seems like an interesting setting for a play." But my uncle, Tim, reminded me about another fascinating sub-fluvial environment: the caissons beneath the bed of the East River during the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. Ah, now this had real potential.