Davy B. (Part 1 of 2)

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The FireVaney’s real-life expatriate pally-wally, Davey B., recently paid a visit to The Big Apple. Formerly from my neck of the woods, he’s now a Londoner.

Some of what he had to say during and regarding the East Coast visit…

“I'm glad you're reading ‘On the Road’. Coincidentally, I spent over twenty hours over several days this last week walking around Manhattan with my ‘The Beat Generation Guide to New York’ in my hand, checking out every Allen Ginsberg apartment, the place Kerouac wrote ‘On the Road’, the park where Lucian Carr killed David Kammerer, etc. Plus I saw the new film ‘The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg’ last night in Greenwich Village. It's only a matter of time before I finally give in and buy that black turtleneck and beret.”

…

“This has been my only sustained experience of New York, I having only been here once for a week when a teenager, and from what I understand it's a country unto itself. (When I went to Atlantic City today, the ‘real’ America appeared: Fat. Ugly. Patriotic and stupid (but I repeat myself). I like New York a lot. I'd love to live in Greenwich Village. I just need to make a million dollars from selling a novel with the word ‘I’ in it a lot first [this is a gibe at Chuck Palahniuk’s Minimalist concept of Submerging The ‘I’].”

“But seriously, I find people who say things like ‘I love America’ to be a bit ridiculous. Because I think countries are too complex and multifaceted to either love or hate. Of course, people are complex and multifaceted too, and I can love or hate individual people. But people are complex collections of simple units, whereas countries are complex collections of complex units (namely, people), so there you go.”

“I can appreciate cities more than countries. London. Paris. New York. I've never been to San Francisco, but I'm sure I'd love it.”

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