Tropes, Trains, & the Empire’s Veins
letter to a friend
Rather than recast these rough ideas into a formal article focused on tropes and trains, I’m leaving this letter to a friend, who is conducting an online book club, in its original form, babbling, informal, and intimate. I let the reader fall into the water, splash in medias res, but trust it will be easy to see the upward drift of the bubbles.
Hi. Re Studio Ghibli-esque graphic novels, I realize you’re quite knowledgeable about graphic novels, & you likely have a direction in mind for your new group, so don’t let my limited field of vision warp your plans. I’m looking forward to Hex Wives.
I have to watch/read The Girl on the Train — it’s on my list. I might be confusing it with another movie — I thought she witnesses a murder from a passing train (kind of like Antonioni’s Blow-Up, in which a professional photographer is messing around in a park shooting some pictures, & it’s not until he gets back to the darkroom that he discovers he’s coincidentally photographed a murder in progress).
I went through an Amtrak phase, and when you enter Chicago, which is a hub to the system, you go by all these ramshackle houses & get a candid cross-section of American Life. This is also what I love about Latin America: a cross between traditional Spanish architecture & tropical climates…
