Michelle                                                                                    Expos Writ – Ms.Gokturk

Due date: Jan.15^th 2004-01-15                                                           Final Draft Genre Essay

The Typical New Yorker: Are The Stories True?

             New York is one of the most diverse and populated cities in the world. People of different origins and religions probably get along the best here, given the diversity. And yet the visitors, non-New Yorkers from different states or countries, tend to envision certain stereotypes on New Yorkers, which go along the lines of ‘New Yorkers are snobby, brutish people who believe themselves to be superior to those from places other than New York.’ David Sedaris in “City of Angels” and A.J. Liebling in “Apology for Breathing” both portray how the non-New Yorkers have a tendency to think of New Yorkers in this way. In “City of Angels,” Bonnie, a visitor from Greensboro, North Carolina, believes that New Yorkers regard non-natives as people who are less intelligent than themselves. Liebling also agrees with this point of view in “Apology for Breathing,” in saying how the non-natives get offended when New Yorkers remark about something which wouldn’t normally be taken offensively if said elsewhere.

             Many non-native visitors in New York are distrustful of the New Yorkers during their visits, having beliefs that the inhabitants of this state cannot be trusted. One such belief is expressed when Bonnie “convinced that, given half a chance, the people of New York would steal the fillings right out of her mouth”(126), gets into her defensive mode when the taxi driver innocently asks her whether she is from out of town or not. She overreacts, taking down registration numbers and threatening to call the police if he tried to do anything weird, because she believe that the taxi driver was trying to ‘rip’ her off. Also, Bonnie “insisted that the waitress had overcharged her for her milk shake, even though the price was right there on the menu.”(129) Once again, she starts to suspect that New Yorkers were trying to cheat her out of her money. Others, such as Bonnie, possess the same distrust of New Yorkers. For example, they become “outraged over the price of their hot roasted chestnuts”(131), believing that New Yorkers were overcharging them.

             Another staunch belief that the visitors to New York seem to have is that they believe that New Yorkers view themselves better than all others who are non-New Yorkers. When Bonnie expresses her distress, shrieking, “Excuse me, but for your information, I do not appreciate being taken for a fool. I may be from Greensboro, North Carolina, but I can count just as well as anyone else.”(129) The transit clerk at the subway station accidentally gave her the wrong change, but Bonnie stubbornly sticks to her belief that the clerk thought her stupid. And later in the day, when Sedaris suggests to Bonnie that it would be better to wear something more fitting to go to a place like the Plaza Hotel, she snaps back, “Let me tell you something, Mr. New York City. I am very comfortable with the way I look, and if the Plaza Hotel doesn’t like what I’m wearing, then that’s their problem, not mine.”(130) She gets offended, with the impression that he, a typical New Yorker, was just looking down on her because she was from out of New York. Liebling goes further to suggest that non-New Yorkers tend to have more of this tendency to put stereotypes on others, than New Yorkers, in saying “If the inhabitants of Kentucky are distrustful of strangers, that is duly noted as an entertaining local trait. But if a New Yorker says that he doesn’t like Kentuckians he is marked a cold churl.”(631) So according to this implication, non-New Yorkers are more sensitive to how others view them, than do New Yorkers themselves.

             Both groups – the New Yorkers and the non-New Yorkers – view one another as people from this one, big, foreign place that is not their own. According to Liebling, “Back where they came from, I gather,” meaning the homelands of his friends from out of state, “is the American scene (New York, of course, just isn’t America).”(626) This shows that the non-natives of New York view New York as a foreign place that does not fit the American criteria. At the same time, however, Liebling says, “I always think of back where my friends came from as one place, possessing a homogeneous quality of not being New York.”(626) Although we New Yorkers may complain that people form other states place stereotypes on us, we tend to place labels on them as well, to a certain extent. Bonnie’s complaint that “I expect to be treated like everybody else is what I expect. I expect to be treated like an American,”(127) confirms the suspicion that outsiders believe that New Yorkers discriminate against them as foreigners.

             As both authors, David Sedaris and A.J. Liebling, show, certain stereotypes are put on New Yorkers by non-natives from other states that label New Yorkers as a stuck-up people who cannot be trusted. “City of Angels” and “Apology for Breathing” show examples that support this. But when considering the total accuracy of this standpoint, do take into account the point-of-view of the writers, as these literary pieces were written by New Yorkers themselves.