Day 67 (1.ix.08)
Boston. What a way to mark (just about) two months since I boarded the plane to Toronto all but clueless as to what awaited me on the other side. The city where the War of Independence kicked off with Paul Revere and the tea-party, guaranteeing it iconic status in the eyes of all later generations of Americans. The city of the Red Sox, one of, if not the, most successful MLB teams of all time. And the home of the most famous university in the world, Harvard, as well as countless local competitors, MIT, Boston U, Berklee College of Music &c &c. In other words, one of the most important cities in the USA, putting the whole of Massachusetts on the map, at least where the rumours among non-New Englanders are concerned. Were it not for these three points, historical, sporting and academic, Boston would be a nonentity neighbourhood, as relevant to the wider world as Stoke or Carlisle.
And it shows. The inhabitants of Boston have long grown used to this barely-deserved special pedigree, and the self-importance they have evolved because of it has spread throughout the whole state. Where DC, Princeton and New York are festooned with American flags to emphasise nationhood and geopolitical identification in an increasingly multicultural age, Boston and Cambridge on the opposite shore of the Charles River have no need of such visual patriotism. Why? Because, as became clear after only a few hours of exposure to the Boston atmosphere, it is here, not in the big national cities, that the despicable arrogance with which Americans are stereotypically associated, and which many of the repugnant American guys I’ve known (most of whom come from this area anyway – specifically Nantucket) exercised remorselessly, has its roots. Where the citizens of Washington and New York are respectful, subtle, helpful and polite, Bostonians go into the day with a brainless swagger that says ‘bow to me, because I’m better than you’ll ever be, because I come from Bwaahrston’. I’ve written before about the stares I get for being noticeably foreign (and at times for being young, male and white as well depending on the motivation of the stare), but nothing I’ve had so far compares to the downright insolence with which I got all but stared out of the city. The men, loud and obnoxious and more obese on average than their city counterparts; the women, tarted up, attention-seeking and arrogant; all with the same slow egocentric walk that takes up twice as much pavement as their cross-sectional area warrants, and at least four abreast to prevent anyone from going past.
The same attitude carries over into their driving. Admittedly the traffic signals here are appalling and pretty much useless – often red in all possible directions, and with no recognisable correlation between indications for cars and pedestrians. If I’d followed the pedestrian signals, I would never have been able to cross a single road, but trying to second-guess car signals was almost just as difficult. What doesn’t help is that the drivers, sprawled all over their seats, chewing gum and wearing Ray-bans, keep trying to jostle ahead of the remaining traffic even when their lights are still red. I was because of this that I nearly had my left leg shorn off by a fat redneck in a Chrysler who had the temerity to yell out of the window at me to get out of the way, and my right by a gaggle of about seven girls squashed into a tiny Suzuki, all of whom were trying to drive the car in different directions at the same time. Both culprits got a selection of my finest visual and verbal obscenities as a response – never let it be said that I don’t actively promote equality between the sexes… Oh, and before I forget, the beggars here are all black as well (like in DC), but perhaps because the ethnic balance is more biased towards whites here than elsewhere, they’re even more aggressive – I actually got followed briefly by two particularly enterprising specimens until I made a detour towards the nearest police officer.
The crowning inglory, if the offensiveness of the people wasn’t bad enough, were the actual real live sites of Cambridge and Boston (I visited the former in the morning, and the latter in the afternoon). Up to now, I’d heard hype upon hype from friends, family, teachers, many people whose judgment I respect, about how Cambridge, MA, is the ultimate seat of learning, before which even the heavyweights of Oxford and Cambridge, UK, have no choice but to run and hide. I contemplated many ways of conveying what I’m about to say on the way back today, some more vitriolic than others, but here’s my final version of my initial verdict: THEY ARE WRONG. And the reason why is closely related to the one that has made me despise all native Bostonians: I have yet to see any sure sign that the hype is remotely justified. Geographically, Harvard Square and the locality around it were an unmitigated disappointment – if I’m being brutally honest, it looks like the university stole some of Princeton’s buildings and one of their (less impressive) quads and planted it in the middle of a failed attempt to construct an American version of the town of Cambridge, UK. I listened in to a tour guide briefly before the urge to regurgitate my breakfast became too powerful – for all his attempts to make the (even in relative terms) rubbish American Gothic of the older parts of the university out to be the next Wonder of the modern world, the remotest crevice of Corpus Christi (Oxford) could architecturally slam-dunk the whole town of Cambridge, MA, any day.
And then there were the modern buildings. Frankly, I’ve seen (and when I say ’seen’ I mean ‘been taught in’) more imposing faculty constructions among the Bekynton portaloos at Eton – with all the money that Harvard has, surely (I struggled to reason) there should be a little more p’zazz, a shade more oomph, about their supposedly world-beating departments. No, of course not. Because, as I soon found out once I crossed back onto the Boston side to the Harvard sports facilites, they’d much rather build an American football pitch the size of fifteen Wembley stadiums, and surround it with a herd of chapels of every conceivable denomination that look like something the curator of the Tate Modern might find buried in an unusually elaborate work by Tracey Emin, than spend a single nickle, dime or quarter (all of which incidentally look exactly the same, making using coins hideously difficult) on improving their academic facilities. Because of course they don’t need to. Because they come from Bwaahrston, remember? They’re already the centre of the universe anyway, so however much anyone else spends, they’ll still be inherently better. Because they say so. It took me a while to work out what it was that was bothering me about the area all of today, but I got it on the way back, much the same time as when I decided that I’d arrange Kurt Weill’s ‘Kanonen-Song’ for cello and piano once I’m back in England. Boston and Cambridge, MA, exude an inherent overpowering smug conceit that I’ve never seen anywhere else (though I’ve seen it demonstrated by certain individuals, who I won’t name because I want to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level). It’s the sort of conceit that complete nobodies suddenly develop when Cash in the Attic unearths a postcard by Queen Victoria inside the handle of their grandmother’s old toilet brush. And I find it absolutely disgusting, fist-clenchingly revolting.
So embittered was I by the sheer let-down, so punctured were all the expectations I had of the intellectual grandeur that Harvard would display, that all I could think of on the way back to the hostel was the determination with which I’d fixed a two-week stay in Boston into my travel plans (which will almost without doubt decrease to one week, one-and-a-half maximum), and the sheer guilt at the time and money I could have spent making my stays in DC and New York that bit more relaxed and fulfilling. What I really didn’t need as I crossed back through Boston Common was for a church’s glockenspiel chimes to ring out one of my favourite hymns from my school days, which they’d played at our leavers’ service, and for a busking accordionist to strike up ‘Podmoskovniye Vyechera’, one of the saddest Russian songs I learnt at school, as soon as the bells were out of earshot. It was only with extreme difficulty that I was able to disguise the odd brightness in my eyes of rage and disappointment from curious passers-by.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m still prepared to be pleasantly surprised by what Boston and Cambridge have to offer, or I would already have made plans to move on to New York as soon as possible. What today showed me, however, in the starkest, harshest way possible, is that the pure academic perfection that I previously assumed Harvard embodied better than anywhere else in the world simply does not exist. And even if it did, it would always be forced to cede to the greater marketability of lower pleasures such as sport or mass pacification like organised worship. And where its echo does exist, the danger of fuelling sick arrogance as a result of excessive flattery is not only too high, but ever-present as well. Maybe I was guilty of assuming that understatement is not just an English trait. Or maybe I was right, and its manifestation in Harvard has only been drowned out by the louder fanfares of Bostoniana. I cannot hope enough that the latter is true. Which is why this isn’t meant to be a diatribe (though I concede it reads like one), but a challenge: I am still ready to be impressed, but it’s Massachusetts that has to deliver.
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