Teju Cole

When walking the streets of a city > every decision, where to turn, how long to linger lost in thought before an abandoned building, was of no consequence, and for this reason was a sign of freedom. I traversed the city’s neighborhoods as though I had to measure them with my stride, and the subway stations served as recurring motifs of my unending wandering . The protagonist and narrator of this novel is a young psychiatrist of Nigerian descent, the child of a mixed couple: an African father and a European mother. He spends much of his free time wandering the streets of New York. > The walks fulfilled a need: they were an escape from the strictly regimented mental environment of work, and once I discovered them as therapy, they became normal, and I forgot what life had been like before I began walking . Wandering the city on foot is a grand metaphor. It is a toponymic itinerary, a geographical discovery, and as such “a regime of competence and perfection.” At the same time, it is a journey into the labyrinth of the mind. Like the urban plan of a city, the human mind is a network of logical intersections, a rational model within which, however, we move in leaps. An image, a snatch of conversation, a chance encounter is enough to carry us “far away,” to other images, to memories, to the depths of the unconscious toward an "I" > never fully explored and unlocked. The novel can be read on three levels. First and foremost, it is an account of the protagonist’s urban wanderings. Moving aimlessly, he encounters places meticulously described in their history and urban function; they are also, and above all, watersheds between neighborhoods and unpredictable turning points in his journey on foot. Walking allows one to upend the rational model, since one is not constrained to follow traffic arteries, inadvertently leading to unexpected quarters of the city—historically significant, yet long forgotten in the consciousness of its inhabitants. The improvisation and slowness of walking also allow for encounters with others. Many are casual encounters, while others involve habitual acquaintances, yet always met by chance. In any case, they offer the opportunity to hear others’ lives narrated: their memories, their aspirations, and the ideas that animate their existence. Our protagonist does not like to speak; he prefers to listen, yet he does so without curiosity, almost as if fulfilling his psychiatric vocation even outside of work. The city then yields unexpected discoveries that bring us to the novel’s second level of interpretation: the genocides perpetrated by Western man. It is incredible, but in Manhattan itself, at the very center of global capitalism, there are sites that recall the slaughter of indigenous peoples, just as entire neighborhoods of skyscrapers and apartment buildings were erected over a burial ground where slaves were interred—those who died during the crossings from Africa or perished just after arriving in America. For all its pomposity, the West does not even respect the veneration of the dead! The city thus expresses a cosmic wound, a universal sorrow, latent and concealed within the consciousness of contemporary man. Aimless roaming also stirs remembrances, ushering us to the narrative’s third level: childhood, with the brief and intense bond with his maternal grandmother, his father’s funeral, the military academy where the young protagonist completed his education before moving to the United States. It is Nigeria resurfacing, with its spiritualism so distant from Western culture. Yet above all, it is the unresolved relationship with his mother, who carries a deep wound: she is the product of a rape, for which she blames her own mother, the maternal grandmother, and her native land, Belgium. Pursuing the labyrinth of the mind, the protagonist has thus arrived at a dark juncture: his mother’s existential grief, which prevented her from truly loving her son. Have we reached the conclusion of this journey into the unconscious? Is there something else the protagonist refuses to acknowledge and accept? In his peregrinations along the city streets, the protagonist happens to meet the sister of a childhood friend. It is she who recognizes him and speaks to him. They exchange the customary pleasantries of people who have not seen each other in a long time, between individuals whose relationship was superficial and slight. The friend invites the protagonist to a party at her boyfriend’s home. While looking out from the terrace at the countless lights of Manhattan, the friend pulls the protagonist aside and reminds him that, when she was fifteen years old and I was a year younger..... I had forced myself into her... afterward, she said, in the weeks that followed, in the months and years that followed, I had acted as if I knew nothing, I had even forgotten her to the point of not recognizing her when we met again, and never tried to acknowledge what I had done... but it was not so for her, she said, the pleasure of denial had not been possible for her". > Each of us must, at some level, take oneself as the yardstick of normality, must assume that the mansion of one's own mind is not, cannot be, entirely opaque to him To myself, I am always the hero > and so, what does it mean when, in someone else's version, I am the villain? The novel concludes with a highly evocative metaphor. The Statue of Liberty is what all immigrants see upon arriving in New York. Yet against this great statue hundreds of birds crash, driven by the currents and the wind. A precise system of statistics records each death: species, number, date, and weather conditions. With scientific precision, an attempt is made to bring rationality to a cosmic and existential phenomenon that encapsulates the destiny of each of us: as an emigrant people and as an individual in search of himself. We are faced with a complex book, difficult in its content, intellectually rich yet lacking in vigor, in some ways cryptic and prolix. What sustains a nonexistent narrative plot and an equally fragile system of characters is the prose: an English that is elegant, delicate, sophisticated, and simple all at once. It is read with pleasure, yet one gets lost in the narrative dispersion and in the obsessive effort to give voice to too many topics and reflections. Why not read it? Too long and verbose. One loses oneself.