When Cambridgistas find themselves stuck in, gasp, Worcester
The Upstairs Girl tears a new one for some Cambridge nob who finds herself stranded in a Worcester hotel room with no books to read and only a large-screen TV to keep her company:
... Worcester! Horrors! It's so backward it's practically the deep South! It's too bad there aren't nine colleges within the city itself - a city so devoid of intellectual life would never have any bookstores. In fact, my education - received as it was in the even vaster, emptier wasteland surrounding that city - was conducted entirely through the use of cave paintings, until I miraculously woke up one day at college and fully literate, in the author's fair city of Cambridge. ...
The Upstairs Girl also ponders what sort of Cambridge intellectual would leave for a trip to Worcester in the middle of a frickin' snowstorm without taking a book along.
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Why was she even there?
She was supposedly heading to the hinterlands to pick up her kid at college. Apparently, weather reports don't come in book form. Neither do commuter rail schedules, I guess.
Given the weather, why didn't she just have her son get on a train and pick him up at a red line station? He would have had a reverse commute in to South Station, and they could have fetched any additional stuff he needed when the traffic cleared. Oh, but that would have been unsatisfying for two reasons: her son might get independent,or it might be a longer and less comfortable journey for his pooor widdle self. Neither would have satisfied her need to collect martyrdom points.
I totally agree....the woman really was beyond stupid!!
Why in hell would she drive to Worcester despite and during a big snowstorm that had been predicted for days in advance to pick up her son? Imho, the woman could've/should've done one of two things: either waited a day or two after the big Dec. 13th storm to go and pick up her son, or have her son come to Cambridge via the trains or other public transportation. There's a lesson to be learned: never, never go anyplace long distance, be it by driving or public transportation when there's a big storm brewing and there's the real possibility of being stuck.
Cambridgista?
I think it's Cantabridgian.
Yes, but ...
I was using it in the Colbertista form.
No - Cambridgista fits
No - Cambridgista fits better. I'm sure there are still some Sandinista t-shirts at the bottom of bureau drawers over there in the People's Repubilc.
thanks!
Hey, thanks for linking to me! Glad I'm not the only one who thought the article was beyond stupid...
pearls before swine
What an incredibly poor setup for a literary column, and what a contradictory opening!
This, I thought, was going to be exciting, what with little vials of complimentary shampoo to examine and lots of pillows and cable TV. Exhilaration reigned - until I realized I had left home with nothing to read, that I was bookless in Worcester. It was horrible beyond horrible, and, unexpectedly, the gigantic flat-screen TV that presided over the room made it worse.
...wait, so which is it, lady? Are you excited by the opportunity to watch cable TV, or does that big bad teevee set scare you? (And did you take all those vials of shampoo home and not leave a tip for housekeeping?)
And when she does manage to get her hands on some printed material, which as we all know is extremely rare outside I-495, she gets extremely cranky about it. Oh, horrors, a collection of pulp detective stories from the mid-20th century:
It is rotten with dull prose, implausible plots, and hashed-up characters ... The book is, in sum, unreadable...
(That sound you just heard was my eyes rolling so far back in my head they can see brain matter.)
What was she expecting from pulp fiction, anyway? F. Scott Fitzgerald? They're called pulp fiction for a reason! They were lurid stories written quickly by the literary equivalent of Tin Pan Alley composers and published on the cheapest book paper possible. You don't read them expecting a succinct, incisive contemplation into man's inhumanity to man. You read 'em because they're implausible and hashed-up and a hoot besides.
Apparently she was indeed shocked and dismayed by such fiction, because then in her shock and dismay she goes and takes solace in a Paris Review compilation. From what I've seen and heard, the Paris Review exists solely for people who want to tell you that they read it.
Maybe I shouldn't have expected anything more from the person who was too scared to venture outside her Worcester hotel room and, you know, actually interact with some of the locals.
Ye gods.
Gasp!
Worcester is nothing like the Deep South. I mean, my god, there are no colleges or bookstores below the Mason-Dixon. Most of us can't read anyway.