New York: Who Needs It?

"New York: Who Needs It?" is an article published in Harper's in August 1975.

Summary

E.B. White and his dog Minnie

Vonnegut's first literary agent, Kenneth Littauer, would often claim New York City was made up only of those "close to the top of [their] field" or they wouldn't last long. This "romance about the connection between the city and competence" is belied by the truth that many of these experts are "political leaders and greedy financiers" who are driving the city into bankruptcy. Like all port cities, New York blindly accepts whoever arrives, including some who are "incompetents, fakers, imbeciles, and freaks" driven from other areas. Vonnegut moved to the city five years ago to put on a stage production and stayed, finding it agreeable to "shoptalk" about the arts with others. New York's primary attraction is the illusion the most mundane activities must be important "in such a busy, expensive place".

Vonnegut now lives in Turtle Bay, across the street from a home once owned by E.B. White, who decades ago exuberantly praised the city but has since moved to North Brooklin, Maine. Such people do not leave because of taxes or crime, but because their illusions have collapsed, especially the one that the suffering and cruelty that is also found in New York is somehow only accidental and temporary. It is, in fact, a "permanently cruel" place, "a polluted lake on which splendid vessels bob" while "an awful lot of drowning" goes on by many others. A revolution is needed to battle such incompetence and capricious wealth inequality, but it will not begin in New York, where even the homeless are somehow made optimistic by the energy of the city. Vonnegut himself, who as a writer could live anywhere, for some reason foolishly stays in "the lethal fraud called New York".

See Also

• "Skyscraper National Park", in which Vonnegut says Manhattan is home to the "guild" of American writers