|
Pick up your copy of
The Subway Chronicles
today!
The
Subway Chronicles is available at
Amazon,
Barnes & Noble
or your favorite local retailer.
The book
contains 27 essays from some of your favorite straphangers
like Jonathan Lethem, Francine Prose, Calvin Trillin and
Lawrence Block, and some of the writers you've discovered on
this site, such as Anastasia Ashman, Megan Lyles and Ken
Wheaton. Read more!
Visit The Subway Chronicles on
My Space!
Read the editor's
BLOG!
Click here
for more information about the book or to view the
table of contents.
What's neW
Markus Hartel .
http://www.markushartel.com
New York black and white street photography
Inside...
-
Danielle Winston realizes that once you make eye
contact on the subway, you can never go back.
-
What is your favorite line?
Paula Damiano pays homage to the 1 train.
About Us
Founded in March 2002, The Subway Chronicles is a
journal written by commuters - the people who ride
the New York City subway every day.
We publish essays, creative nonfiction and subway
diaries each month, and we're always looking for new
material. Click here to read our
submission guidelines.
So if you want to check out the best reality show
around, stay a while and see what's going on
underground. Fear Factor has nothing on us.
Contact us with questions, ideas or to send your
essay.
submissions [at] thesubwaychronicles
[dot] com |
links
NYC Transit
- NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign
is a great place to start for information about public
transportation in NYC.
www.straphangers.org
- Join our friend network
at on My Space at myspace.com/thesubwaychronicles.
Transit Around the Globe
|
Book Excerpt
from "Tunnel
Stories," by
Jennifer Toth
Almost fifteen years have passed since I wrote my final
chapter [in The Mole People]. New York's
underground still follows me. In Marrakech and Berlin,
London and Paris, almost without realizing it, I look
for people in the dark hollows of tunnels and subways.
Whatever city or country, it is the same search. Cupping
my hands to the darkened windows at the ends of subway
cars, peering down grates, I look for evidence of life.
Sometimes I see people wandering the tracks or camped at
their sides, and I imagine their stories from the way
they walk or sit or stand. Abused child, runaway teen,
disturbed war veteran, drug addict, alcoholic, mentally
ill, depressed, bipolar, schizophrenic.
Today I think of a man who has amnesia. From a car
accident, he thinks. When he woke from a coma, he had
several grown children, a few grandchildren, and a kind
wife of thirty-five years. He could not recognize them.
He could remember complicated math equations. He knew
how to read. He recited long poems to me, and even
longer passages from books I only later read. But he
could not remember his family. This did not bother him
much at first, but it troubled his family greatly. His
personality had changed.
"They didn't want to know me as I am now. Every day they
mourned for someone I didn't know and couldn't care less
about," he said.
He had to leave, he said. He had to disappear from the
life he had left when his head hit the windshield. He
was free now, he claimed, though sometimes he missed his
soft bed, a full fridge, and the warmth of a body next
to him. But at least he was free of pain, he told me.
Find The Subway Chronicles at your favorite retailer. |
Online Essay Of The Month
July 2008
A Matter of Life
and Death
by Montana Whiteley
It's 11 a.m. on
Tuesday and my normally reliable downtown 1
train – reliable being a relative term – is
late, very late. I step into the first car of
the train, as always. This was, at first,
because I could usually get a seat and it would
let me off close to the exit at my 50th Street
stop, but now because it has become almost a
pathology for me, to where I will actually miss
trains if I can't get to the first car quickly
enough. Today it is packed, wall-to-wall, and I
immediately regret my decision to layer a thick
hoodie under my pea coat in case of rain (Hoods,
always hoods. I refuse to contribute to
nightmare-ish problem of umbrellas in this
city. The fact that I have both of my eyes
after a good rain never ceases to amaze me.)
The train begins moving at half the normal speed
and the commute is already excruciating. I only
have five stops to go between 86th Street and
50th Street, but I'm sweating profusely and
jockeying for arm space between two tall men in
heavy jackets. At a slow crawl we make it past
79th… 72nd… 66th…59th… picking up hoards at
every stop. Why doesn't anyone get off? I
wonder, slamming my bag into the lady's face in
front of me as my left earphone falls out and I
struggle to replace it. Someone has to go to
these places. They have to. Carefully timed to
my absolute breaking point, we finally begin the
nine block trek from 59th to 50th, and pick up
speed at that, when the train comes to a total,
sudden, dare I say, screeching halt. No. No.
Why? We're so close. I can smell the Times
Square tourists. Come on train, come on. Slowly
the train moves again, and I breathe a sigh of
relief. Inch by inch, the first two cars creep
into the station and agonizingly, the train
stops again. A minute goes by…then two…then
five…the people outside stare in at us and we
stare out at them, imprisoned. Desperation
begins to kick in.
[More...]
See more featured
essays here.
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