Train Reading
That's why it's hard to figure out sometimes who the target audience for these subway books might be, apart from buffs and obsessive tourists. Still, with the centennial of the New York subway system at hand, a number of them are hitting the shelves.
Among them is a collection by Randy Kennedy, who wrote the award-winning "Tunnel Vision" subway column for the Times from 2001 to 2003.
The book's introduction is just another tired spiel about how "the subway is the great leveler." Perhaps I've read too many books about the subway system, but one of these days I wish someone would come up with something other than the "great leveler" bit. We're all very aware that fishmongers and stockbrokers and delivery boys and derelicts all ride the same trains, sometimes even standing near one another.
After that inauspicious beginning, however, things pick up. Too often, collections by newspaper columnists are a bad idea. If they write about politics or culture, their columns are outdated long before the book hits the shelves. Kennedy's book, however, may prove the rare exception. The subway system, after all, is a century old, and apart from some cosmetic and technological upgrades (along with a few fare hikes), it remains the same system. Riders today still face the same problems they did in 1904.
What Kennedy does here, with occasional technical and historical asides, is put a human face on what can seem like a faceless and heartless system. Most of the columns are character sketches. He talks to motormen, conductors, token booth clerks and the guys who ride the yellow work trains. He interviews artists, a magician and a woman who has a theory about the leg-spreading phenomenon. He asks commuters what they're reading, and ponders what makes a good train book. He even gets to discuss C.H.U.D. ("cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers") in his column about the Chambers St. station?voted the ugliest station in the whole system.
And for some reason, he's really fixated on those Far Rockaway pigeons who ride the A train a few stops, looking for food scraps.
The final chapter of Subwayland focuses on the effect the attacks had on the subways of Lower Manhattan, the clean-up and the rebuilding effort. It closes on an upbeat note, with the reopening of the South Ferry station.
In cramming all of these columns together, the book has its repetitions. And sometimes Kennedy's straightforward Times prose, despite his best efforts (and wide array of cultural references) can be a little dry. But those are forgivable sins. Ironically, the book ends up making for perfect subway reading. And the fact is, I learned a number of things from this book. (I never knew about the Track Geometry Train, for instance.)
Is Subwayland the greatest book ever written about the subway? For my money, that honor still goes to John Godey's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. If you're looking for a straightforward history of the subway, I'd suggest 722 Miles. Jim Dwyer's Subway Lives is an entertaining and less conventional take on some of the same territory Kennedy is covering here. But if you're looking for an interesting read in convenient, bite-sized pieces, as well as one that'll leave you with a broad understanding of how that No. 3 train got you into the office this morning (and explain a few of the things you saw along the way), Subwayland might be just the thing you're waiting for.