“Postcards from the End of America,” by
Linh Dinh, 2017
If you traveled by Greyhound, Megabus or train on a
limited budget around the U.S., walking through worn-out neighborhoods and
drinking in dive bars, you’d know something about what happened to the U.S.
after the 2008 economic collapse. Linh
Dinh did. He’s a 50-something, funny guy
born in Vietnam who voyaged out of his home base in Philadelphia, a crap town
if there ever was one, busy talking to everyone he met. They were making money in fracktown Williston, North Dakota, hipster
Portland and techie San Jose, but everywhere else – it was easy
to find a tent city or flop house. The period:
April 2013 to June 2015.
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| Travel Writing At Its Finest |
Dinh’s a lefty with a way for comedic words and
sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. He’s
good at tearing up the stupid or hypocritical, Wall Street and the Pentagon,
politicians, war-mongering and consumerism – and even liberals and
expensive college educations. He makes
fun of post-modern art, “Apocalypse Now”
and the Iowa
Writers Workshop, so he’s not quite a denizen.
Half-Feral Towns
He sends a ‘postcard’ essay from each town he visits,
like the hollowed-out formerly industrial stretch above Philly – North Philly, Camden, Norristown, Trenton,
Levittown, Vineland
and worse. Some of which are now
‘bullet’ towns. Or California’s
San ‘Hose,’ home of the tech industry, which sleeps side by side with the
homeless. LA’s downtown tent city, New
York’s Washington Heights or San Fran’s Tenderloin, where the yuppies are
moving in. In Washington D.C.
7,000 homeless bed down every night around the White House and the Capitol
after the tourists are gone. A native
American Rez town in Montana, Wolfs Point, where the dead pile up; and the deindustrialized
Joliet, Illinois of the 1980s union ‘war zone.' Even the dirty South – art squats in New Orleans and free food at a bar in the wasteland of Jackson,
Mississippi.
And other places, 32 postcards in all.
This is what is really going on outside ‘the bubble.’ This is ‘travel writing’ of a different
kind.
Pictures From a Great Recession
Dinh favors a budget beer early in the afternoon,
which is where he meets most people – sitting on stools drinking cheap beer in
half-empty bars. He’s always
enthusiastically amazed by their stories of misery or injustice. After all, even the unemployed, retired or
barely working will not give up drink. Or
those working 80 hours a week. He retells their hard stories without
condescending. Or after getting off a
train, walking blocks and blocks through absolutely unwalkable neighborhoods –
observing the sad flags of patriotism, the constant militarism of too many war monuments,
the kitsch of nothing. As a man of
Vietnamese heritage, he has a unique angle on these U.S. war memorials. He even strolls through historic suburban Levittown, a place that only a car can reach, but now is
called by some: “Leave It Town.”
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| Living Large in L.A. |
Misfits in America
Here are some quotes from Dinh’s book:
- In gentrifying Oakland booze is served up “…by the loveliest daughters of the working class…while their uglier cousins are left huddling in tents, not a half a mile away.”
- “Now if you can barely drink in the heart of any American City, no matter how tiny, you know it’s seriously messed up.”
- “How can I compete if I don’t hire Brazilians? Everybody everywhere is hiring illegals…”
- “…organized violence is an American right of passage…”
- “In Manhattan alone, there are now 200 Subways, 74 McDonalds…194 Starbucks, 500 Dunkin’ Donuts…” not to mention Applebees, TGI Fridays, Olive Gardens, Outback Steakhouses and Red Lobsters.
- “… these United States of universal debt bondage.”
- Williston, ND: “Everyone’s tired here.”
- Wolf’s Point, MT: “…a friend of mine just got his left leg sawed off.” (From diabetes.)
- A Beverly Hills Israeli businessman who imported workers from Thailand for huge upfront fees: “Instead of 3 years of regular work, they were often furloughed without pay. Some lived in a shipping container. Some were beaten. Workers spoke of eating just bananas and hunting birds with rubber band slingshots because they were so hungry.”
- Rich people: “…those who have only been waited on can be extremely demanding, if not rude, to the waitstaff.” Duh.
- On elections: “…all to give citizens the impression that their participation matters, for in the end, the lying buffoon who gets to stride into the White House has long been vetted and pre-selected by the banks, death merchants and brainwashing media that run our infernally corrupt and murderous country.”
- “Besides Netflix, an early twenty-first century American is also kept in quarantine by Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and of course, online porn.”
- “I’ve stopped going to museums.”
- On downtown Washington DC “If this is their only exposure to the U.S., then the country is truly a utopia of handsome, well-dressed people who cherish the arts, fine dining and well-made cocktails.”
- “In small towns across America, you have this basic scenario of little or no manufacturing jobs left, so the locals must scramble for service jobs…”
- We might be reaching: “…peak white man.”
- “…people the world over talk to each other while drinking. It’s called socializing.”
Other books on this topic: “Nomadland,”
“How to Kill a City,” “The Sympathizer,” “Palmers Bar,” and books on Vietnam.
And I bought it at May Day’s excellent used/cutout
section!
Red Frog
November 6, 2018
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