An Experiment in Either Misery or Luxury

As we walked toward the station the stranger stopped often to observe types which interested him.  He did it with an unconscious calm insolence as if the people were bugs.  Once a bug threatened to beat him.  “What ‘cher lookin' at?” he asked of him.  “My friend, said the stranger, “if any one displays real interest in you in this world, you should take it as an occasion for serious study and reflection.  You should be supremely amazed to find that a man can be interested in anybody but himself!”

That’s Stephen Crane in “Coney Island’s Failing Days,” included in the Library of America’s collection under the section heading of “New York City, 1892-94.”  The quotation there could stand in for a summary of the whole section.  One imagines Crane wandering through the town for three years simply observing and writing down what he sees.  We get portraits of the lowest of the low and the wealthiest. We get snapshots of odd moments in the life of the city.  All done with Crane’s eye for the telling detail.

Is such observation enough?  Crane certainly observes more than most.  Is he right that the objects of notice should be grateful for the simple fact of being noticed? 

Consider: “When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers.”  In this brief sketch a man walking along with his boy falls to the ground, insensible.  A crowd gathers.  (The alert and perceptive reader can see from whence the title of this piece comes.)  Five pages later, an ambulance has carried the man off.  And what have we learned? 

Curiously, Crane’s story is much like watching the evening news.  Man falls.  CNN reports on it.  Next story.  Sometimes we continue to stare after the ambulance as it leaves the scene.  “It was as if they had been cheated.  Their eyes expressed discontent at this curtain which had been rung down in the midst of the drama.  And this impenetrable fabric suddenly intervening between a suffering creature and their curiosity, seemed to appear to them as an injustice.”

I finished reading this set of pieces by Crane a few weeks back, and I am still troubled by it all.  This morning, I was rereading Evangelii Gaudium, Francis’ first encyclical from last November.  In this much misunderstood encyclical, Francis is desperately trying to convince the Church, Christians everywhere, and indeed the whole world, that we need to pay more attention to the poor, the disenfranchised, the weak, the lowly.  And surely he is right.  But, Francis is missing the bigger point being made by Crane:  do we pay sufficient attention to the not-so-poor and not-so-weak?  Indeed, do we pay sufficient attention to anyone, anyone at all?

Man falls.  Not just the poor man, but the rich man too.  Perhaps the crowd surrounding the rich man is bigger than that surrounding the poor man, but is that enough?  Shouldn’t we also help the poor man out a bit?  Obviously.  But, what about the rich man?  Should we say that since he has wealth, it is enough to gather around when he falls?

We don’t notice people as people.  We notice that they fall, and we gather when they do, but who are these nameless people?  Who was that student I just saw walk past my office?  Shouldn’t I care?

Crane offers no solution; this is voyeurism, pure and simple.  I am not sure what to make of it.  I read about people in the depths of a coal mine in the late 19^th century and I think…I have no idea what I think.  I read about gawkers gathered around a fire and I think, “Here I am gawking at the gawkers. I am being exactly as helpful as they are.”