NPR: The View from the Front of the Subway

The View from the Front of the Subway

@labanex just tweeted this video from inside the front door of New York City's 7 train. It's 48 minutes long. You could always save the other 46 for a rainy day. Or maybe you need them now.

In Libra, Don DeLillo has the young Lee Harvey Oswald soaking up just such a view:

"[H]e rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track. He liked to stand at the front of the car, hands flat against the glass. The train smashed through the dark. People stood on local platforms staring nowhere, a look they had been practicing for years. He kind of wondered, speeding past, who they really were. His body fluttered in the fastest stretches. They went so fast sometimes that he thought they were on the edge of no-control. The noise was pitched to a level of pain he absorbed as a personal test... There was so much iron in the sound of those curves he could almost taste it, like a toy you put in your mouth when you were little."

And yes, it is kind of like that, even if you're not Lee Harvey Oswald.

Laura Conaway

1:24 PM ET | 06- 2-2008 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

This is labanex, Antonio, and I just want to make sure that the credit goes to where credit is due. My father, Salaam Allah, videotaped this. Thank you for the article.

Sent by labanex | 12:46 AM ET | 06-03-2008

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