Entering the shadowy side of Knoxville: West Front Street
McCARTHY, Suttree: “At the end of the street the earth fell away
into a long gut clogged with a maze of shacks and coops, nameless
constructions of tarpaper and tin. ...Whole blocks of hovels cut
through by no street but goatpaths and little narrow ways paved
with black sand.”
SCHWARZENBACH: “On a steep slope there are houses, lightless
and lifeless like a backdrop. There is no smoke in the chimneys; the
doors are locked. Nobody would live here, one would think; no one
can live here. But you meanwhile spot that the streets coming from
the bright city of Knoxville do not end at the bridge and at the steep
edge of the riverbank. They only transform, becoming gray and
unpaved, dark and uneven and thus — as if shamefully shrouded —
lead downwards into the damp gloominess of the river.”
Entering the shadowy side of Knoxville: West Front Street
McCARTHY, Suttree: “At the end of the street the earth fell away
into a long gut clogged with a maze of shacks and coops, nameless
constructions of tarpaper and tin. ...Whole blocks of hovels cut
through by no street but goatpaths and little narrow ways paved
with black sand.”
SCHWARZENBACH: “On a steep slope there are houses, lightless
and lifeless like a backdrop. There is no smoke in the chimneys; the
doors are locked. Nobody would live here, one would think; no one
can live here. But you meanwhile spot that the streets coming from
the bright city of Knoxville do not end at the bridge and at the steep
edge of the riverbank. They only transform, becoming gray and
unpaved, dark and uneven and thus — as if shamefully shrouded —
lead downwards into the damp gloominess of the river.”
...the journey seems to me less an adventure and a foray into unusual realms than a concentrated likeness of our existence: residents of a city, citizens of country, beholden to a class or a social circle...
— Annemarie Schwarzenbach —