Downward Moves
SCHWARZENBACH: “During the day, West Front Street is filled with life that appears sad and bustling at the same time. I walk around and ask people how they make ends meet. The dwellers of West Front Street sometimes don’t even know it themselves. Many of them are ‘on relief,’ getting some welfare support, many of them are looking for work, many of them go hungry. It appears as if they don’t know that above them, only 10 minutes away, there are paved roads, gourmet food shops, as well as the modern, smartly-arranged display windows of TVA teaching that there is a future. In between their shabby dwellings, in a spacious garage there are six big, black, varnished automobiles that appear as smooth as a mirror. When the engines start and when these cars turn into the street, one realizes that these cars are hearses. This is the only glamour that one can find on West Front Street."
Downward Moves
SCHWARZENBACH: “During the day, West Front
Street is filled with life that appears sad and
bustling at the same time. I walk around and ask
people how they make ends meet. The dwellers
of West Front Street sometimes don’t even know
it themselves. Many of them are ‘on relief,’ getting
some welfare support, many of them are looking for
work, many of them go hungry. It appears as if they
don’t know that above them, only 10 minutes away,
there are paved roads, gourmet food shops, as well
as the modern, smartly-arranged display windows
of TVA teaching that there is a future. In between their shabby dwellings,
in a spacious garage there are six big, black, varnished automobiles that
appear as smooth as a mirror. When the engines start and when these
cars turn into the street, one realizes that these cars are hearses. This is
the only glamour that one can find on West Front Street."
...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 —