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.
