By Jason Boog
I lost my job in December 2008, unemployed at the beginning of the longest, coldest winter I can remember in New York City.
Up until then, everything had been going swimmingly: I was a staff writer at an investigative reporting publication, taught an undergraduate journalism class, and proposed to my girlfriend in a fairytale forest along the Hudson River. Suddenly, I had to tell my friends, relatives, and students how I had failed.
Out of everything I read during those gloomy months, I found the most comfort in Maxwell Bodenheim—an author who lost everything during the Great Depression. In 1934, he wrote: “There’s something wrong with this world all right, but I can’t put my finger on it…Something must be wrong when a fellow can’t get a decent wage, can’t tell when he’s going to be fired, can’t look forward to any promise of happiness. Something is rotten somewhere.” Reading those lines, I felt like somebody had finally described my New York City predicament.
As I struggled to find work, I contemplated Bodenheim’s generation—hoping to find some clue to how they survived economic disaster. I collected stacks of clippings and a bookshelf of abandoned books. Following their footsteps, I traced an invisible map of New York City’s most miserable landmarks. Somehow, the project soothed me.