This week I'm going to America. It's the first time I've been across the Atlantic, and I'm pretty damn excited, especially since for the first few days I'm in New York City. And as well as climbing the Empire State Building, eating a bagel and getting ripped off by a taxi driver, I'm keen to make the most out of my fresh-off-the-plane status by going on a literary pilgrimage.
It's something I've rarely thought about doing in the UK, I suppose because I just take it all for granted. But while I'm still feeling like I'm on holiday in America, it's struck me that trying to set myself in a scene from a book could be a lot of fun. It should also assuage that puritanical part of me that will feel like I've somehow wasted the trip if I haven't done something vaguely "cultural."
The trouble is that there's such an embarrassment of things to do. I could go to a diner, order a "kwoffee" and a huge breakfast and imagine myself as Sal Paradise in On the Road, waiting to meet Dean Moriarty before burning off in a big dust cloud into the great American night ... Then I got to thinking I could go and eat my breakfast staring in the window at Tiffany's. Or perhaps I should go to Lindy's, the model for Damon Runyon's Mindy's, and eat some of their famous cheesecake, imagining Harry the Horse and his lowlife crew sitting at the next table.
After breakfast, if the weather's fine, it might be fun to travel out to the Hamptons - and specifically Great Neck, the model for F Scott Fitzgerald's West Egg. There I could enjoy myself by imagining the bright lights of the parties Fitzgerald so vividly recreated and staring out moodily over the dark water, trying to see whatever it was out there that so troubled Jay Gatsby.
If I do that, of course, I won't have time to see all the other thousands of sites on offer. I might not even get back in time for cocktails at the Algonquin, where my girlfriend informs me we have to experience a Dorothy Parker moment.
Finally, I'm keen to retrace the footsteps of detective Quinn in Paul Auster's City of Glass, not least because this website, which is as brilliant as it is nerdish, proves it's possible and makes the whole thing look so alluring.
The fact that someone has already mapped out the journey, however, has started to worry me. Perhaps my references are too run of the mill. Should I try something more adventurous? There must be something new, but all I can think of is a singularly unappealing journey into the city's great sewer network to see if I can find any of the alligators that feature so memorably in Thomas Pynchon's V...
So, I guess I'm open to suggestion. If anyone has an idea that will make me feel cultured, bring a treasured book to life and not cost too much effort, I'd welcome the contribution. If it works out well, I'll even try and write about it here.
Of course, the other possibility is that trying to place yourself in the scene of a work of fiction is pointless - no more enlightening than any other tourist activity, and possibly half as much fun. Maybe I should just go and ride the rollercoasters at Coney Island. They do look kind of cool, after all.
