Hometown Prose

ALBANY, N.Y. - One fallacy that continues to persist is that when I'm home, I'll catch up on my e-mail. Before arriving here in Albany, I imagined myself typing away at the computer, returning unanswered dispatches from March and reconnecting with lost friends. In reality, you're much more likely to receive a note from me originating in Indiana or France than Albany or Boston.

But tonight, with an extra hour due to daylight savings time, I started an e-mail to a friend in Australia, last seen in Zhengzhou. I decided to write to him because in addition to having an unanswered e-mail, I'm also reading a book that takes place in his current town of Alice Springs.

The book is "The Songlines" by Bruce Chatwin, and tells the author's quest to find the meaning of indigenous songs, and more deeply, trying to find a connection between nomadic peoples around the world. It's an ambitious, mostly non-fiction account of a lengthy visit to the area in the late 1980s. The text is fascinating, as it runs from encounters with Russian castaways and priests on the lam. The book makes me pine for a visit to Alice Springs, a desert settlement of 28,000 over a thousand miles from a major city.

I hesitated to mention this in the e-mail, as it seems too obvious. Surely my friend has heard of the travel book largely set in his hometown? A book that is taught in universities, has been awarded several prizes and is considered a masterpiece by important literary critics?

Albany has one famous work of fiction: "Ironweed." The William J. Kennedy book chronicles a down-on-his-luck man's return to his hometown during the final years of the Great Depression. I should say it apparently does, because I've never read the book. I heard of it growing up, but its setting in Albany never made me want to pick it up. I remember it now because in my travels, when people (usually educated people) find out I'm from Albany, they'll ask me if I've read "Ironweed."

So maybe The Songlines isn't being read in Alice Springs after all.