Lawrence Richette

"Philly Lit Today": Commentary from Philly writers.

#2 in a series--
LAWRENCE RICHETTE:

THE SECOND CITY
I live in Philadelphia. By choice. I have lived in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles happily, and I could have chosen to stay in any of those other cities, but Philly kept calling me home.

It is after all the second-largest city on the East Coast. But its proximity to New York City gives Philadelphians a terrible inferiority complex. We are both too far from the perceived cultural center of the country, which is allegedly Manhatttan, and too close not to be swalllowed up by New York's gravitational pull.

I have now published six novels through Xlibris. Of them all but the latest one take place, wholly or in part, in Philadelphia. I continue to find the city a boundless source of inspiration. Philip Roth recently observed with a rare show of common sense that American writers tend to be regiionalists. Twenty years ago, when I started writing novels, I had no thought of becoming twentieth-century Philadelphia's chronicler. And yet that is what I seem to have become. Philadelphia teems with characters, stories, locations that have never been described. Any fiction writer who keeps his/her eyes and ears open will be rewarded--if that writer is willing to tell the truth.

From a crass material standpoint, Philly is a great place to live, at least compared to New York or D.C., because you can live well here on a relatively low income. The city has its disadvantages too. There's a lack of support for local writers, and the number of independent bookstores where you can set up a reading has shrunken drastically in the past year. The city library and school system need to coordinate better with regional poets and novelists, to get them in contact with Philadelphia's future creators. And Philadelphia's so-called independent media often ignores or denigrates local talent in favor of brand-name mediocrities like the unspeakable Jennifer Weiner.

New York is, in my view, a moribund place for a young writer to start out. There is too much cutthroat competition, for one thing, and the values of New York are all about success, not quality. In Philadelphia things tend to be the opposite. It may be a second city in population, but it is the first city in the country in terms of an up-and-coming arts scene. And if you get tired of cheap rents, soft pretzels, and Mummers, you can always jump on a Greyhound bus for less than $40 round trip and spend the day in Manhattan. I did that yesterday, and while I had a fine time, I felt my heart lift as we crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge.