“Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.”
The spirit of the novel lies in the aesthetics of New York City be it the scenery, metropolitan layout, or urban life. The protagonist Julius spends most of the profound scenes in the story taking walks through the city. The title offers a sense of the novel since the story is not majorly plot or conflict-driven but by the protagonist’s thought process and the New York City ‘pulse’. As a result, the city plays a major role in the book as the author pays great detail in describing the setting and layout. It depicts the city in all its glory without holding back on the minute details.
“I became aware of just how fleeting the sense of happiness was, and how flimsy its basis: a warm restaurant after having come in from the rain, the smell of food and wine, interesting conversation, daylight falling weakly on the polished cherrywood of the tables.”
Happiness is a construct explored through Julius’ stream of consciousness which raises the question of whether he is happy or not. Julius feels detached and overwhelmed with his reality which makes him self-aware of everything around him. Particularly, his curious mind and bizarre way of looking at things without attaching them to concepts of pleasure or satisfaction. Therefore, the point of view he harbors allows him to view life in a technical manner as alluded to in the quotation.
“I couldn't remember what life was like before I started walking.”
Julius goes through a psychological and emotional journey marked by two significant events in his life; one is his breakup and the search of his grandmother. Apart from the other few encounters in between the novel is essentially composed of his walks and thought process. The walks allow him to have great epiphanies and adopt a particular way of viewing his reality by mentally detaching from it. These new ideas and encounters offer emotional clarity that he did not possess before his new routine.
