Culture
Book Review: ‘Taking Manhattan,’ by Russell Shorto
Dorothea Angola, Shorto tells us, arrived in New Amsterdam enslaved, possibly in 1627. She married and had children, and in 1644, her husband petitioned the Dutch West India Company for the couple’s freedom, which was granted. Soon after, they were given a six-acre tract to farm in what would become Greenwich Village.
But their children were not freed. There’s no evidence that they were pressed into forced labor, but Shorto writes that “this unbelievably cruel caveat would certainly have ensured that the parents would do whatever the company asked of them.” (Later, Angola petitioned for and was granted freedom for their adopted son.)
The story of Native people is full of death and dispossession, but the 17th-century power dynamics were complex. At one key moment, Shorto writes, a Montaukett leader named Quashawam, facing encroaching British settlers on Long Island, wanted to ally with the Dutch. It seems she tried to warn Stuyvesant that British ships were coming to take Manhattan, but he ignored the message. Quashawam wound up joining forces with the British and the Shinnecock instead.
This is why, when Nicolls and the British sailed in, it was a surprise to the Dutch. Nicolls gave Stuyvesant two days to surrender or be attacked. Meanwhile, the Dutch fought among themselves. The British sent Stuyvesant a note, and he tore it up before the city council could read it. But at the moment of peak danger, Shorto argues, Stuyvesant redeemed himself. He recognized a duty not just to his bosses at the West India Company, but to this new, weird city that was becoming its own thing. An hour before Nicolls’s ultimatum expired, Stuyvesant wrote back. He was willing to negotiate to save the city.
Nicolls wanted New Amsterdam not just for its strategic location, but for its open, commercial culture. So, Shorto writes, he agreed to a deal that “reads more like a corporate merger than a treaty of surrender.”
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
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