The Ethicist As Literary Cartographer of Manhattan
NY Times Ethicist Randy Cohen announces to readers (Gothamist assumes he means all NY Times readers, though he just mentions "Book Review" readers) that he wants their suggestions to make a literary map of Manhattan, places where literary characters walked, brooded, or traipsed. Email suggestions to bookmap@nytimes.com (there are more rules and regs, like having page numbers and quotes, here), credit will be given to the first person who sends in a submission for a particular book. And, friends, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile has already been submitted:
Bernard Waber places Lyle, Lyle Crocodile for us: "This is the house. The house on East 88th Street." But where on East 88th Street? The clue comes in an illustration: the amiable reptile stands on his front stoop looking at a house to his left marked No. 234. That puts Lyle's own house at No. 236. Alas, a visit to the block shows not the charming brownstone where Lyle lolled but an ordinary tenement. Lyle's house, like Lyle, is a fiction. As it happens, Harriet the Spy lives in the same neighborhood, in a house on East 87th. You'd think someone as clever as she would have noticed a crocodile around the block.The map will be published in June. Gothamist loves this idea, but while Cohen hopes for maps of Chicago and London next, we wonder about a map of the outer boroughs (think Jonathan Lethem, Walt Whitman).
Look at what the map would be. And Gothamist's interview with Randy Cohen: "I find that when people find out who I am or what I do the fun immediately stops." Also, Gothamist is now tempted to organize a map of Law & Order locales, like Hudson University and all the fake addresses. Someday!
