Caldecott Monday: The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

[osprey_archer]

Mordicai Gerstein’s The Man Who Walked Between the Towers won the Caldecott Medal in 2003, and I gotta confess, I think that right-after-9/11 timing has a lot to do with that win. The illustrations are perfectly serviceable, if somewhat Schoolhouse-Rockish - which fits with the 1970s setting of the story - but still, it’s a book about the World Trade Center.

Specifically, it’s a book about Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the two towers in 1974, and it is possibly the most 1970s story in the world. Petit and his friends sneak the tightrope into the towers, string it up under cover of night (with the help of a bow and arrow!), and finish just in time for Petit to begin his tightrope walk at dawn.

The police of course are unedified, but no one is going out on that tightrope after him, so he stays up there dancing on his tightrope as long as he feels like it (to the delight of all New Yorkers below, one presumes), until he steps off and graciously holds out his wrists for the cuffs. The judge (portrayed in the book as a kindly bald man) sentences him to perform in the park for the children of the city.

I think today the police and the judge and for that matter building security would all take a dimmer view of this sort of thing, although who knows really. Maybe they would all be so pleased to have some good news for once that they too would be inclined to blink at whatever 150 rules Petit must have broken with this sneak high-wire act.

Comments

[missroserose]

As I recall, there's a documentary about this dude, called (I think?) Man On Wire...I've heard it's excellent, although I only rarely watch documentaries (or movies in general) so it's probably doomed to forever be on my to-watch list. That and Exit Through the Gift Shop, and Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and...is anyone ever going to invent the 30-hour day? There's so much *art* that needs enjoying out there!

[asakiyume]

I did watch Man on Wire, and it *was* very good. Excellent quotes from Philippe Petit:

He says of himself, “My story is a fairy tale.” He conceived his goal when he was seventeen years old and read an article about the proposed but not-yet-built World Trade Center. He recalls thinking, “The object of my dream doesn’t exist yet.”

(That's from the entry I wrote after watching it. Entry here)

[osprey_archer]

Oh, thanks for linking your review! Perhaps I will see the documentary someday, after all. It does sound enchanting.

[osprey_archer]

I rarely watch documentaries either, but... maybe someday! I was glad I watched Blackfish when I finally got around to it, so sometimes documentaries are worth it.

[asakiyume]

This type of thing is so emotionally complicated. The person doing the thing--whatever it is--is a kind of kidnapper, holding norms and our attention hostage while they do it. At the end, the public is--theoretically--too awed and exhilarated to be angry. Or the person is dead--in which case, the anger (and sorrow) has no real place to go.

It's hugely selfish, but I do think there can be a kind of magnificence about it too (I think--not an opinion everyone will have), and part of the magnificence comes from doing it covertly. It wouldn't be the same if permits were obtained, etc. The high-wire feat is the main thing, but the stealing of the doing of it is part of it. ... Depending on the feat, it can be less magnificent-seeming. The more people who are put at risk by what you do, the less magnificent, etc. (And, the grandiosity and attention-seeking may be too much of a turnoff, too, depending on the person and the feat and us, ourselves, and how we feel about those things.)

[sovay]

(And, the grandiosity and attention-seeking may be too much of a turnoff, too, depending on the person and the feat and us, ourselves, and how we feel about those things.)

Some feats are more for display; some are a contest with oneself; which kind it is makes a difference to how I feel about it. Philippe Petit seems to have been more the latter, which doesn't mean he was the angel that wire-walkers so often look like, but he didn't need to be. The thing he dreamed into reality did not hurt anyone. Partly he got lucky, partly he was as good as he thought he was, and it was not intended to. And now it's a dream again, because no one else will ever even try to walk between those towers, because that road of air is gone.

[asakiyume]

You say it so beautifully. Yes.

[osprey_archer]

Honestly it seemed so enchanting in the book that I didn't even think about the possible selfishness of it: it seemed like a beautiful gift he was giving to the citizens below, all the more beautiful because it was completely serendipitous who would get to see it.

But certainly if he had fallen it would have been a different story.