New York City

New York City is the principal setting of Edison Appaloosa’s musical ambition: a place where he seeks recognition, builds a life in jazz, and measures himself against the promise of a larger career. It is also a costly and uncertain working environment. The city’s clubs and professional networks offer him opportunities, but not dependable income; his eventual departure for Iowa therefore recasts New York from a stage for anticipated success into a place where artistic reputation cannot guarantee security.

The city as a chosen proving ground

Edison first leaves for New York as a teenager, barely old enough to shave. He has no place to live and, by the narrator’s later recollection, knows nobody there. He swings a pack onto his back and sticks out his thumb. At the time, his younger sister admires his apparent fearlessness and assumes he will land on his feet. As an adult, she recognizes that his youth made the departure more precarious than she understood. Edison recalls that their father, Travis Appaloosa, expected him to return within a week, and that the expectation helped motivate him. New York begins as a test of independence, undertaken with little security and a strong desire to prove himself.

The city also supplies a model of success that shapes how Edison talks about his work. He has long wanted fame, while his sister values anonymity and regards public attention as exposure rather than reward. Their difference is not simply a contrast between a city life and a quieter one: it is a contrast in what recognition means. Edison wants to be known, and New York offers the imagined audience and professional standing that his sister would rather avoid.

A working jazz musician’s New York

When Edison visits Iowa after years apart, he presents his New York life as active and expansive. He mentions gigs, sessions, practice, club work, and a musical scene that has shifted toward Brooklyn. He lists fellow musicians and describes an upcoming tour of Spain and Portugal, with other possible engagements still uncertain. He also teaches at Maine Jazz Camp and has promising students. The catalogue conveys real professional activity, but it reaches his sister through the confident account he gives rather than through a clear picture of his finances or career stability.

The narrator’s uncertainty about jazz is part of the distance between them. She does not know the musicians Edison names, has learned not to ask who is playing on a track, and rarely listens to his recordings. She has heard his career described in terms of the next tour or opportunity, and has tended to accept his self-assurance as evidence that a major success is close. Her later understanding complicates this image: Edison’s connections and reputation endure, but they do not amount to reliable work or sufficient pay.

In a later account of his difficulties, Edison describes taking whatever gigs he can find while falling behind on rent. A weekend at Cornelia might bring about a hundred dollars before dinner and cab fare; the Jazz Gallery pays nothing, and at Barbès in Brooklyn he may leave with forty dollars. These figures make the economics of his city life concrete. He is not simply waiting for a breakthrough: he is working, but the available work does not cover the costs of staying in New York. Once he is three months behind on rent and faces eviction, he says he sees no alternative but to sell his Schimmel piano, his most prized possession and the first major purchase he made during the more lucrative early years.

Leaving, returning, and changing measure

At forty-four, Edison repeats the departure he made as a teenager, this time returning to New York after a long stay with his sister’s family in Iowa. His announcement of the plan is cut short when Travis mocks him over the phone; Edison quietly ends the call. The interruption puts family conflict alongside professional ambition, but it does not erase the practical stakes of leaving. His sister is frightened to let him go, unlike when he first set out at seventeen, because she now understands how little certainty his self-confidence has provided.

Edison’s account of the city is also a complaint about the distance between the life he imagines and the life his sister leads. He describes himself as staying up late in Manhattan while she lives among corn in Iowa, worlds apart from one another. Yet his view of New York as the necessary center of his identity begins to loosen during his later stay in Iowa. There he plays piano for pleasure, visits the Iowa City Jazz Festival, and joins jam sessions at The Mill. When he introduces himself, he gives only his first name and does not trade on famous associates or past connections. The change is visible not in a declared rejection of New York, but in the quieter way he presents himself as a musician.

The contrast is not a simple verdict that Iowa has cured what New York caused. Edison’s sister observes that he becomes more at ease with local life, while the account also describes how professional disappointment, weight, and depression become entangled in his decline. His career narrows as his weight limits opportunities; discouragement feeds overeating, which in turn worsens his prospects. New York is part of that cycle, but the novel does not reduce his difficulties to the city alone.

The city in the narrator’s retrospective

New York’s meaning shifts with the narrator’s changing knowledge of her brother. At first, she has envied his daring and accepted his stories of musical activity as evidence of a life that is both glamorous and secure. As she learns about poorly paid performances, missed rent, and the sale of the piano, the same city comes to signify the fragility of the success she had admired. Artistic reputation may open doors, but it cannot ensure that a musician can afford to remain in the city where he has built his identity.

The novel finally makes that identity itself uncertain. In her retrospective, the narrator distinguishes the events she can affirm from the redemptive story she imagines: Edison did spend two difficult months with her family, and she did consider asking him to stay so they could work on his weight and understand how he had gained it. But she questions whether the version of her brother who abandons New York, disciplines himself, and changes for her is credible. New York thus remains more than a backdrop. It is the place tied to Edison’s youthful independence and adult aspirations, but also the measure against which the narrator tests her old admiration—and the hopeful transformation she later recognizes may be partly her own invention.