STRANGE THINGS ABOUT CITY LIFE
...e some interesting points about the nature of human beings. In his "The Idiocy of Urban Life" Henry Fairlie puts together a long list of what is silly, humiliating, and even dangerous about life in the city. He begins with some sarcastic observations about the fact that the only truly civilized creatures in the city are the rats who come out at 4 AM and lick their paws after a night of eating garbage. After these inhabitants of the city go to bed, Fairlie says: "the two legged inhabitants of the city begin to stir and it is they not the rats, who bring the rat race"(527). Then Fairlie proceeds to point to the most obvious paradox of rural/urban realities which is that of suburban life: "The lunacy of modern life lies in the fact that most city dwellers who can do so try to live outside the city boundaries"(527). Fairlie finds it quite amusing that the masses of people who want to work in the city also want to stream out of the city at the end of the work day. He looks back with longing on a time when the captains of industry had their large mansions on the hill to look down on their factories and their workers too. Now people want the excitement and high pay of the city during the daytime and the calm and quiet of the country at night, Fairlie says. The only problem this gets them into is that everybody wants this at the same time and the result is the traffic jam. Some people spend large parts of their lives in rooms on wheels (cars) while others are jammed up against one another in public transport. Fairlie seems to be saying that we would have a better world if the old boundary lines between city and country could be re-established. It is hard to believe that he means this. Fairlie is far too familiar with the tortures of the commuter's life to convince the reader that somehow he avoided the "lunacy" of urban/suburban life. What Fairlie is really saying is that we human beings are the sort of creatures who "want it all", namely the sophisticated life of the urban worker and the relaxed life of the country gentleman. Charles Creekmore is more interested in what goes on in the city than in the ironies of urban life that are so difficult for Fairlie. He begins his picture of city life, however, with a picture that would make Fairlie laugh. He is lined up at a toll booth trying to get out of the city and one of the charming people who works there screams at him to "Grow up!" Creekmore begins his praise of the city on an unhappy note when he talks about this confrontation: "To me the incident has always summed up the essence of what cities are: hotbeds of small embarrassments, de-humanizing confrontations, monetary setbacks, angry people, and festering acts of God"(532). City life, Creekmore says, is the sort of thing that really should make a man lose his sanity. Then Creekmore looks at what a number of psychologists and sociologists have said about the reality (as opposed to the m...