Where are the Five Points? Why are they so interesting?

The streets’ names have changed over the years according to Sante, but the fascination with this infamous neighborhood in Manhattan has remained the same. In LOW LIFE, Sante tells us that,

The Old Brewery [which is a major set in Scorsese's Gangs of New York, if you remember, where Leonardo Dicaprio's character Amsterdam recovers from near-death, and before which many a battle was fought] was the magnetic center of the area called the Five Points, the intersection of Orange (now Baxter), Cross (now Park), and Anthony (also known as Cat Hollow, no Worth) Streets, the immediate area also bounded by Ryndert (now Mulberry) and Little Water (also known as Dandy Lane and since built over).    pg. 28

In his review of the Gangs of New York film Gregory J. Christiano expands on the area: “This was the Sixth Ward and became notorious for its crime-ridden streets, colorful gangs, prostitutes, petty thieves and gamblers.  There was all manner of vice, debauchery and corruption.  Even the police and fire brigades were part of this lawless environment not to mention the politicians.  (para.1)”

The Sixth Ward

I’m borrowing the above images from Mr. Christiano’s excellent essay on Urbanography called “The Five Points,” in which he comments on the Sixth Ward/Five Points area, then goes on to show us some fabulous news articles from the time (you can read it here). He begins his essay by explaining that

The name Five Points evokes images of poverty, rampant crime, decadence and despair. That’s true. The Five Points was a lurid geographical cancer filled with dilapidated and unlivable tenement houses, gang extortion, corrupt politicians, houses of ill-repute and drunkenness and gambling.  This was a place where all manner of crime flourished, the residents terrorized and squalor prevailed.      para. 1

On thing that Scorsese does in Gangs of New York is to depict the myriad tales of the New York low life. His city is filled brimful with tiny micro-stories, each played out on the streets, sometimes taking place a block off in the background of the main action. We feel the woeful living of these people as we watch them limping about, or staring out at us from their windows. Why is Scorsese fascinated with it? Why did Sante write about it?

This is open to discussion. I, for one, think it fascinating to see such a different America, yet so much like our own. I find it easy to relate to the goings on of this time period, as if it were happening only yesterday, and yet I’m removed from it enough to look at it from a critical perspective. And this goes especially for things related to New York, a city that may have changed vastly in some ways, but has remained the same in so many others.

As students, studying a place like the Five Points can show us numerous things- but I’ll start by quoting Ms. Vargas, who quoted Jacob Riis when she wrote: “The slum is the measure of civilization.” And perhaps we measure ourselves when we experience the narratives of those who lived in the Five Points. This is all just the start of such a discussion, of course. The question, again: Why do we find the Five Points so fascinating?

Daniel Day-Lewis (D-Day) and Scorsese’s Gangs

D-Day has won his Oscar for his role as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, and I think none of us can argue with the sometimes erroneous desicions of the Academy. In our class, watching Scorsese’s Gangs of New York comes with it two distinct pleasures. The first being a glimpse into more of D-Day’s acting chops. The second pleasure of viewing would have to be the new knowledge I have of Old New York, the time period in which this film is set (during the Civil War).

D-Day is reportedly a method actor- meaning that he seeks his role from within himself, and plays that role on–and off–camera. As such, he is notoriously difficult on set, often aloof and in-character at moments that could easily make his fellow actors a little uncomfortable. His role in Gangs is that of Bill the Butcher (a real character from Herbert Asbury’s non-fiction novel of the same name as the film named Bill Poole, here named Bill Cutting). He is a ruthless Nativist who can throw a knife with great accuracy, and he can be very scary in the role (much like his role as Plainview in Blood), and I can imagine that his fellow players didn’t much enjoy being around the guy while he sat in his chair awaiting his cue to film, if he did in fact continue acting like a killer even when he wasn’t supposed to.

D-Day’s performance in Gangs holds up: he is electric in the film, and although Dicaprio does well to stand and face Bill the Butcher as both a man seeking revenge and a young actor looking to define himself as a tough guy, D-Day steals the show. He was nominated for Best Actor by the Academy, and for good reason. When he utters his final line: “I die a true American,” it is quite magical, if a bit stolid. Though his performance in no way measures to that of the nuanced and sometimes rather broad, breathtaking performance of Plainview, D-Day remains a pleasure to watch.

But perhaps even more pleasing than D-Day is Scorsese and his photographer’s shots of this magnificent set, one that the director, I believe, said may be “the last great set” or something of that sort. Here are built-in views of Jacob Riis’ 19th century photography of the streets in Old New York. One can literally pick out Riis’ “Bandit’s Roost” as Scorsese moves his camera through the Five Points–the central neighborhood where the events of this drama played out–because Scorsese asked his award-winning set designer Dante Ferretti to include them. Ferretti himself speaks in the special features of the DVD about how Scorsese shipped him all of his research: and Ferretti went to work building an entire neighborhood from the ground up. When asked whether Scorsese enjoyed shooting outside of Rome (where the film’s giant set was), Scorsese often replied: “I’m not in Rome. I’m in New York.” DiCaprio concurs in his interviews. As a passive viewer I must say it is a transporting experience. Scorsese takes liberties with his treatment of the historical material–and he is taking liberties from research like Sante’s Low Life and Asbury’s Gangs of New York, two books that most agree were taking liberties as well–but this is part of his mythos, and he speaks in Scorsese on Scorsese about such things, finally, and how he is trying to weave an American Epic, not just a period piece.

When I saw Gangs of New York in the theaters so many years ago, I was not “blown away.” Rather, I felt the script was sensational and a bit overwrought. Cameron Diaz was no choice for a leading role of such proportions, and D-Day, I thought, was pushing his accent and his character out the window. But watching the film again is a rewarding experience. It is always delightful to have a new knowledge to inform a viewing experience, and walking into such a film equipped with a new appreciation of both the actors of the film and the history that the film is based on certainly ups the ante, so to speak, in pushing on the power of Gangs of New York.

Structure in Sante’s Low Life

In my own writing, I often find that I struggle the most with structure. I think the high school/middle school planning strategy of the “upside-down pyramid” can be helpful at first, but inevitably I come across the issue that I have much more information to share than the pyramid can bare. What is the pyramid for? What is organization for? Well, among other things, to create a scaffold for the building of a clear thesis.

Sante tells his reader up front, in his preface, how he will order his book on page xviii of Low Life by writing that “The book is organized into four sections. The first, “Landscape,” sets forth the lay of the land, the material conditions of housing and the look of the streets. The second, “Sporting Life,” concerns temptation and escapism…Within these sections are chapters, arranged according to broad and relatively obvious categories. These categories pertain to the city’s essential commonplaces…” Sante notes that he has a lot of information to share earlier, and now he describes for us just how he plans to dole out this dearth of material. Then he offers an insight into the symbolism of his structure, offering: “The categories can be seen as corresponding to cards in a Tarot deck of New York City…[or] the archetypal figures in a gambler’s dream book.” And Sante is offering us up the spine of one of his overarching themes: the snare, the lure, and how it runs through Low Life. Note how his major theme relates intrinsically to how he organizes his material.

Maintaining organization is one of the best ways to improve readability, and thus direct communication with your audience, and thus making accessible to the reader your thesis, your main idea. Adding a structure to your ideas is an effective way to maintain organization; a structure that your reader can readily recognize and say to herself: “Okay, first he’s gonna talk about this, then this, then this.”

As a writer, it is worth meditating on the question: “How will I structure this piece of writing? How do I maintain clarity? How do I keep the thesis alive even when I go a bit off-track from the main idea?”

One thing I say to myself as I write is: “Every sentence in this paper is meant to serve the thesis, or main topic, of this paper.” And then I go about asking myself of each sentence: “Is this serving the thesis? The general topic?” A lot of these questions can, and should, be asked in the act of revision (more on revision later). Without further ado, I hereby offer the floor to the class:

What strategies do you use in organizing and maintaining structure in a paper?*

I encourage you to look to what your other classmates (and whoever else choses to answer this question), for pointers, and I hope we may amass something of a list of effective strategies in writing a paper.

*You can comment by clicking “Comments” below.

Sante-Quoting

In Sante’s chapter “Home” in Low Life, Sante distinguishes one of his major themes in his first few sentences: the facade. Remember, the book is subtitled “Lures and Snares of Old New York.” and Sante deftly relates his chapter on impoverished living to his main subject.

Sante presents a grand, encompassing view of his subject, the tenement: “The tenement is the basic facade in New York, the face of the slums, a slab of tombstone proportions, four to six stories, pocked by windows. (pg. 23)” In this, the first sentence of his chapter, he has already cast his tenement in a negative light. Note how he compares the tenement facade to a tombstone, a pock. These descriptive words add to the the overall theme of decay and, well, low life living. Then Sante offers a glorious depiction of his tenement:

Above is the towering tin cornice, a confection of scallops and curlicues, with foliaceous brackets, often topped by a semicircular peak, a disk enclosing a rayed sun…The cornice exists in disdain of practical qualities…nit tjos function yield[s] to an aesthetic and the to a nearly heraldic role. It is the most conspicuous item in the tenement’s equipment of fictitious grandeur. (23)

This is prose in motion. Sante not only describes his main subject, but he makes his urgent point: it is all a lure. It is not really real, and as readers we can assume that he will explain exactly how horrible this building really is. Sante quilts his grand theme into the lush, specific detail of the world of Old New York. This is a careful art, one which can raise a piece of prose to an authoritative level of deftness that the reader is really drawn to, and which can lead to longer, deeper papers far more interesting to write and read.

Luc Sante: Re-Imagining New York

I suppose the first thing that I always thing of is that Greenwich Village seemed a much more suitable name for the neighborhood when it was just that- a village. Greenwich was, for a while there, a place far off the beaten path south of Wall Street (a bustling port city stuffed with trade and goods), where stone was crumbled under hammer to rise new houses in rows and cobblestones spilled out, forming these early streets. The rich “summered” and went on holiday in Greenwich Village, where they kept larger houses and cottages, just as they now escape to the Hamptons. Greenwich Village was “the country.” As in, “We’re going to the country house for the week.”

I learned this meager fact at some point during college, and I can’t for the life of remember who taught it to me, and from there my head began to reel. Take a late 18th century walking tour: Start at Wall Street (named at the time for marking the uppermost point of denizened living in the city), from there imagine looking out not onto high-rises filled with sleeping business interns and bachelor bulls, and try to imagine a grassy, hilly green yonder stretching as far as the eye can see, riddled with the occasional boulder, creek, and forest. Take a street toward Greenwich, imagining it a single, narrow dirt path suitable for a slow-traveling carriage, and when you arrive, let’s say, at Christopher St., stop and imagine that this is where you will spend your vacation before returning to the busy city life.

Sante’s Low Life does this for me every time I read him, transporting me to another world–Old New York–where just as much was the same as it was totally alien.

I’m reminded of Gibson’s Apocalypto for odd reasons, in that I more often than not found myself calling it a “space opera”- it was like Star Wars in that everything felt foreign and yet similar, this storied time. But as I said above, Sante’s Old New York (he remains one of its sole custodians) is familiar as well, and he does a superb job of drawing out the reality of this time just as he does its mythos.