“I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.” – Professor Saito (Pg.11)
Many sentences and short rants stood out to me in this novel. However, this specific sentence summed up an important theme in the book for me. The theme of: labyrinths of disconnect.
Teju Cole introduces his readers to a curious character named Julius. In the first half of the book the reader walks through New York City with Julius – he turns different places in New-York city into spaces. Spaces open for imagination and for cognitive thoughts. In chapter three he walks into the American Folk Art Museum and maps out an alluring view of the art work. Cole writes,
“The gallery was quiet and calm and, save for the guard who stood in a corner, I was the only person there. This heightened the feelings of quietness I got from almost all the portraits. The stillness of the people depicted was certainly part of it, as was the sober color palette of each panel, but there was something more, something harder to define: an air of hermeticism. Each of the portraits was a sealed-away world, visible from without impossible to enter.” (Pg.37)
Although Julius is describing an art gallery – this passage can be used to describe the feeling one can have living in New-York city. If you replace the portraits with the bodies that you pass by everyday on the sidewalks – it is easy to feel as if they are “sealed-away” worlds. Most of the time they are impossible to enter because people are so disconnected and connected at the same time in the city. You can imagine the world you could enter but are often scared to.
Neither here or there 