Growing up in Springfield, and now living in New Haven—both medium-sized cities—says writer Mark Oppenheimer in an article (PDF) in his new publication, The New Haven Review of Books, has released him from a destructive quest for status into a realm of humility. He writes:
It gives me an excuse not to attend parties, which drain one’s time. And it obviates the need to seek vainly—forever and without satisfaction—that alignment with trends and fashions that may yield some glowing critical notices but which, in the end, dulls the mind and blunts the instrument.
Oppenheimer waxes nostalgic about his experience as a kid riding his bike around Forest Park and tooling around with friends of modest means. He has also lived in a few neighborhoods in New Haven now, where “the public schools aren’t terrific,” but the communal experience of the neighborhood school would appear to hold more meaning. He also writes:
I increasingly find that the people I like most are those who understand what it means to be from a deeply unfashionable place. I mean unfashionable in both senses of the word: it was not cool to be from Springfield, and if you were from there you would think nothing of going shopping at the Big Y supermarket with your hair still wet in rollers.
[New York City and Washington, DC were] places where young people moved and passed their twenties in a state of passive dislocation, living in houses with changing casts of roommates, paying no attention to local civic life or politics, joining no houses of worship, identifying most strongly with the preferred pub of one’s loose circle of friends.
It’s not as though large cities or small towns don’t offer opportunities for civic involvement and enjoyable patterns of community life; it’s that the non-trendy medium-sized city offers a certain texture and richness to the quality of all those elements. The resulting lifestyle can be enjoyable, challenging and inspiring. In his piece, Oppenheimer indicates that such a setting hones his writerly skills and creative capacity.
