{"id":612,"date":"2009-09-29T12:17:55","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T18:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/?p=612"},"modified":"2009-09-29T12:17:55","modified_gmt":"2009-09-29T18:17:55","slug":"dfw-ohio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2009\/09\/dfw-ohio\/","title":{"rendered":"it’s in ohio"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[Black volcanic sand desert in Iceland, via flickr user meiburgin<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Back in August, while on vacation<\/a>, I read David Foster Wallace’s first novel<\/a>, The Broom of the System<\/em>.\u00a0 A pair of geographies he invented, the suburb of East Corinth and the Great Ohio Desert, particularly fascinated me, as they demonstrate how ordinary ideas (the urban plan as figure and landscape as moral coercion) can become utterly alien, when stretched to extreme scale:<\/p>\n

The ant was torn off the windshield by the wind when Lenore hit the Inner Belt of I-271 and started going seriously fast. \u00a0The offices of the publishing firm of Frequent and Vigorous were in that part of downtown Cleveland called Erieview Plaza, right near Lake Erie. \u00a0Lenore took the Inner Belt south and west from Shaker Heights, preparatory to her being flung by I-271 northward into the city itself, which meant that she was for a while with her car tracing the outline of the city of East Corinth, Ohio, which was where she had her apartment, and which determined the luxuriant and not unpopular shape of the Inner Belt Section of I-271.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Garfield Heights, Ohio<\/div>\n

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East Corinth had been founded and built in the 1960’s by Stonecipher Beadsman II, son of Lenore Beadsman, Lenore Beadsman’s grandfather, who was unfortunately killed at age sixty-five in 1975 in a vat accident during a brief and disastorous attempt on the part of Stonecipheco Baby Foods Products to develop and market something that would compete with Jell-O.\u00a0 Stonecipher Beadsman II had been a man of many talents and even more interests.\u00a0 He had been a really fanatical moviegoer, as well as an amateur urban planner, and he had been particularly rabid in his attachment to a film star named Jayne Mansfield.\u00a0 East Corinth lay in the shape of a profile of Jayne Mansfield: leading down from Shaker Heights in a nimbus of winding road-networks, through delicate features of houses and small businesses, a button nose of a park and a full half-highway extension and tract housing, before jutting precipitously westward in a huge, swollen development of factories and industrial parks, mammoth and bustling, the Belt curving back no less immoderately a couple miles south into a trim lower border of homes and stores and apartment buildings and some boarding houses, including that in which Lenore Beadman herself lived and from which she had driven up over Jayne Mansfield to the Shaker Heights Home this morning.\u00a0 Families and firms owning property along the critical western boundary of the suburb were required by zoning code to paint their facilities in the most realistic colors possible, a condition to which property owners in the far westward section near Garfield Heights (where the industrial swelling was most pronounced) particularly objected, and as one can imagine the whole East Corinth area was immensely popular with airline pilots, who all tended to demand landing patterns into Cleveland-Hopkins Airport over East Corinth, and who made a constant racket, flying low and blinking their lights on and off and waggling their wings.\u00a0 The people of East Corinth, many of them unaware of the shape their town really lay in, a knowledge not exactly public, crawled and drove and walked over the form of Jayne Mansfield, shaking their fists at the bellies of planes… To the south, 271 gave way to 77, and 77 led down through Bedford, Tallmadge, Akron, and Canton before stretching into the Great Ohio Desert, with its miles of ash-fine black sand, and cacti and scorpions, and crowds of fishermen, and concession stands at the rim.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Transcript of Meeting between the Honorable Raymond Zusatz, Governor of the State of Ohio; Mr. Joseph Lungberg, Gubernatorial Aide; Mr. Neil Obstat, Gubernatorial Aide; and Mr. Ed Roy Yancey, Vice President, Industrial Desert Design, Incorporated, Dallas, Texas; 21 June 1972…<\/em><\/p>\n

Governor: Guys, the state is getting soft.\u00a0 I can feel softness out there.\u00a0 It’s getting to be one big suburb and industrial park and mall.\u00a0 Too much development.\u00a0 People are getting complacent.\u00a0 They’re forgetting the way this state was historically hewn out of the wilderness.\u00a0 There’s no more hewing.
\nMr. Obstat: You’ve got a point there, Chief.
\nGovernor: We need a wasteland.
\nMr. Lungberg and Mr. Obstat: A wasteland?
\nGovernor: Gentlemen, we need a desert.
\nMr. Lungberg and Mr. Obstat: A desert?
\nGovernor: Gentleman, a desert.\u00a0 A point of savage reference for the good people of Ohio.\u00a0 A place to fear and love.\u00a0 A blasted region.\u00a0 Something to remind us of what we hewed out of.\u00a0 A place without malls.\u00a0 An Other for Ohio’s Self.\u00a0 Cacti and scorpions and the sun beating down.\u00a0 Desolation.\u00a0 A place for people to wander alone.\u00a0 To reflect.\u00a0 Away from everything.\u00a0 Gentlemen, a desert.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Waw-an-Namus, an extinct volcano in Libya<\/a> and one of the world’s few black deserts.\u00a0 See images here<\/a>. Black sands result from high magnetite content or volcanic basalt or obsidian origin.<\/div>\n

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Mr. Obstat: Just a super idea, Chief.
\nGovernor: Thanks, Neil.\u00a0 Gentlemen may I present Mr. Ed Roy Yancey, of Industrial Desert Design, Dallas.\u00a0 They did Kuwait.
\nMr. Lungberg: Hey, there’s apparently a lot of desert in Kuwait.
\nMr. Yancey: You bet, Joe, and we believe we can provide you folks with a really first-rate desert here in Ohio.
\nMr. Obstat: What about the cost?
\nGovernor: Manageable.
\nMr. Lungberg: Where would it be?
\nMr. Yancey: Well gentlemen, the Governor and I have conferred, and if I could just direct your attention to this map, here…
\nMr. Obstat: That’s Ohio, all right.
\nMr. Yancey: The spot we have in mind is in the south of your great state.\u00a0 Right about… here.\u00a0 Actually here to here.\u00a0 Hundred square miles.
\nMr. Obstat: Around Caldwell?
\nMr. Yancey: Yup.
\nMr. Lungberg: Don’t quite a few people live around there?
\nGovernor: Relocation. Eminent domain.\u00a0 A desert respects no man.\u00a0 Fits with the whole concept.
\nMr. Lungberg: Isn’t that also pretty near Wayne National Forest?
\nGovernor: Not anymore.
\n(Mr. Lungberg whistles)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inland volcanic sands in an Icelandic lava desert (Odasahraun, I believe) near the glacier Vatnaj\u00f6kull, via bing maps<\/a>.<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mr. Obstat: Hey, my mother lives right near Caldwell.
\nGovernor: Hits home, eh Neil?\u00a0 Part of the whole concept.\u00a0 Concept has to hit home.\u00a0 Hewing is violence, Neil.\u00a0 We’re going to hew wilderness out of the soft underbelly of the state.\u00a0 It’s going to hit home.
\nMr. Lungberg: You’re really sold on this, aren’t you, Chief?
\nGovernor: Joe, I’ve never been more sold on anything.\u00a0 It’s what this state needs.\u00a0 I can feel it.
\nMr. Obstat: You’ll go down in history, Chief.\u00a0 You’ll be immortal.
\nGovernor: Thanks, Neil.\u00a0 I just feel its right, and after conferring with Mr. Yancey, I’m just sold.\u00a0 A hundred miles of blinding white sandy nothingness.\u00a0 ‘Course there’ll be some fishing lakes, at the edges, for people to fish in…
\nMr. Lungberg: Why white sand, Chief?\u00a0 Why not, say, black sand?
\nGovernor: Go with that, Joe.
\nMr. Lungberg: Well, really, if the whole idea is supposed to be contrast, otherness, blastedness, should I say sinisterness?\u00a0 Sinisterness is the sense I get.
\nGovernor: Sinisterness fits, that’s good.
\nMr. Lungberg: Well, Ohio is a pretty white state: the roads are white, the people tend to be on the whole white, the sun’s pretty bright here… What better contrast than a hundred miles of black sand?\u00a0 Talk about sinister.\u00a0 And the black would soak up the heat a lot better, too.\u00a0 Be really hot, enhance the blastedness aspect…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Black volcanic sand desert in Iceland, via panoramio user 90\u00b0 EST<\/a>.<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Mr. Lungberg: What about a name, Chief?
\nGovernor: A name? That’s a typically excellent point, Joe.\u00a0 I never thought of the name issue.
\nMr. Lungberg: May I make a suggestion?
\nGovernor: Go.
\nMr. Lungberg: The Great Ohio Desert.
\nGovernor: The Great Ohio Desert.
\nMr. Lungberg: Yes.
\nGovernor: Joe, a super name.\u00a0 I take my hat off to you.\u00a0 You’ve done it again.\u00a0 Great. It spells size, desolation, grandeur, and it says it’s in Ohio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Black volcanic sand desert in Iceland, via flickr user meiburgin.] Back in August, while on vacation, I read David Foster Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System.\u00a0 A pair of geographies he invented, the suburb of East Corinth and the Great Ohio Desert, particularly fascinated me, as they demonstrate how ordinary ideas (the urban […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[196,194,195,83],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landscape","category-urbanism","tag-architectural-fiction","tag-david-foster-wallace","tag-literature","tag-speculative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}