Chuck Connors and Konrad Bercovici

I spent a chunk of today and an even larger chunk on Saturday at the New York Public Library (on 42nd and 5th) doing research. I focused most of my energies on two books -- Chuck Connors' 1904 book Bowery Life (written in collaboration with Richard K. Fox, then the publisher of the Police Gazette) and Konrad Bercovici's 1924 book Around the World in New York.

Connors, also widely known as the Mayor of Chinatown for his seemingly amiable relationship with the residents and workers of Chinatown and for his popular slumming tours of the neighborhood, was quite a curious, self-aggrandizing, and mysterious New York character at the turn of the last century. Because he seemed so devoted to fashioning a larger-than-life version of himself for the public -- much like other New York characters like Al Smith and our old friend George Washington Plunkitt -- it's hard to know what's real from this text and what's just part of the show. Placed atop his own flair for the dramatic is that of the Police Gazette -- a sensationalist entertainment rag (and entertaining it is!) with a mostly working-class, male audience. The book is filled with anecdotes, posed pictures of Connors looking tough, and, at the very end, a series of advertisements for jujitsu, boxing, poker playing, and "dumb-bell exercise" manuals. In other words, this is a coffee table book, not remotely related to reportage.

It is interesting, though, as a discursive piece. And by "discursive" here I mean as a representation of the discourse of white, working-class masculinity in relationship to place and ethnicity. Connors' public persona is built upon his knowledge of the exotic world of the Chinese immigrant community -- and as a working class man, as opposed to a genteel "cream cake" (as he describes uptowners), he is deemed to have particularly acute access to the community. And he's a huckster, a descendant of folks like P.T. Barnum and even (to a more minimal extent) Charles Wilson Peale. So his reputation is impressive because of the fantastic things he shows -- opium dens, Chinese-Irish marriages, tong meetings, "joss-houses," and the like. While Bowery Life offered really very little in the way of slumming data (though there is a somewhat interesting episode in "The True Story of Kitty"), it is a fun document. Here's to hoping I get to learn more about this guy.

The other book was Konrad Bercovici's Around the World in New York, which was useful on the level of how New York's ethnic neighborhoods were sold to a consuming public. Indeed, the major sense I got from this book was that it was about salesmanship -- the salesmanship of ethnic types, of ethnic goods and foods, of local color and the celebration of New York's tendency toward camaraderie instead of enmity in the face of cultural diversity. I really only read the sections on the East Side, Little Italy, and Chinatown, though there's more to go. Bercovici is far more knowledgeable about and forgiving of the East Side Jews, quick to feminize the Chinese, and happy to caricature the Italians. It'll take me some time to figure out what his goal is and what position he represents. One of the things I find most interesting about the book is the fact the Bercovici -- at least as far as Stansell is concerned -- was one of the Lower East Side's most successful "bohemians," collaborating with the likes of John Reed, Emma Goldman, Mabel Dodge, and Eugene O'Neill. So as a "bohemian," I wonder what his stake is in this book and these portrayals? Or is it fair to make him representative of "bohemians?" I'd like to consider him together with Hutchins Hapgood, also a "bohemian," who in particular found coverage of the people of the Lower East Side to be essential to adding "authenticity" to his writing.

Finally, I need to think more about urban tourism and what it means. Why do people travel? What interest would people have in going to these places? Sex, authenticity, freedom, danger -- yes. But is this all? And if these things are what it's all about, would these be the way to organize my thinking more?