Golden Age Thinking: On Why My Head's Stuck in the ‘20s

“…Golden Age thinking — the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in.” - Midnight in Paris (2011)

Michael Sheen’s character in the 2011 Woody Allen movie considers such nostalgia to be a flaw of character, a form of denial used to cope with an unsatisfying present. I’m not sure I entirely disagree but I don’t think I would give up my penchant for golden age thinking, given the option.  My overactive imagination extends beyond just a nostalgia for the past. I have a habit of zoning out into a world of my own, where any possible version of events could be playing out in my head – be it in this time period, or the past. But, certainly, there are periods of time from history that hold a certain appeal over others, ones that draw me in, an element of glitz (however realistic or not) that I can’t deny sounds more appealing than the mundane of my present. 

Of course, the lesson of Midnight in Paris is that with such thinking, we can never be satisfied. The protagonist of the film believes the Jazz Age to be the best of times, for literature and art and lifestyle, but the character he meets from such an age would far rather find herself in the height of La Belle Epoque than her own, dull present of the 1920s. 

Speakeasies can still be found in Manhattan… If you know where to look.

For many, it was a fantastic era. The urbanisation and mass move into the cities brought increased commercialisation which benefited the economy massively. Women’s liberation took bounds during this time as they received the vote and a wave of independence compared to times gone past.  But despite the increased wealth and prosperity of the post-war 1920s, particularly if I focus my attention as I often do on this period to New York and the Eastern seaboard of the United States, it was not a perfect time, by any means.

Corruption within the police department was high with Prohibition taking hold of the city, an idea that, however well-meaning, failed so spectacularly as to profit a suddenly booming underground liquor business. The dangers of bootleg liquor shouldn’t be taken lightly either with an estimated 10,000 people dying during the Prohibition years from drinking suspicious concoctions from people’s basements. Drastic social changes also brought new tensions to communities and race relations were not well handled. 

Be it "a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present” or not, the Jazz Age will always for me conjure up images as from a Fitzgerald novel. For me, part of the joy of travelling is that many of the places I visit will speak a history to me from their walls. I found that in Morocco, absolutely, the old red mud whispering tales of times gone by. And one place I’ve always found it to be true, from my first visit there, is New York.

2018 or 1927? Something of the city never changes.

When I was asked in late 2014 whether I’d like to write a novel with independent publisher, Interlude Press, who I’d worked with on a short story, I didn’t have a story planned out. I didn’t have a plot ready to go for such a moment, or a project on the back-burner. I sat, and I thought about what I might like to write about and without hesitation, I knew it had to be about New York in the 1920s. Those buildings, those streets of Manhattan, they had been speaking to me for seven years, and that was where I wanted to focus my mind.

As a writer, particularly as one of historical fiction, I get completely enveloped in a project. I will absorb myself in books and articles and films and music, as much as is possible, of the time I’m writing in, and I will sprout facts about it constantly. (Should you ask me, at present, for example, anything about the Golden Age of Piracy, you should expect a meaty answer in response, my head constantly at sea for the past couple of years). It’s part of the joy of the writing process for me, to engage with all of that material in order to craft what I’ve learned into something new or different.

I read a lot about Prohibition and speakeasies and Manhattan at that time to write Speakeasy. In my research, I have to say, I did not come across anything that would suggest that there really were any speakeasies that operated as underground gay clubs, as TJ does in my novel. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, and it doesn’t mean it isn’t a plausible idea. In a time of the worst kept secrets hidden behind sliding bookcases and beneath barbershops, it seems as though a good time as any to imagine such a safe haven being built as TJ. I’ve stood on the very street corner where I imagined it to be located, in my novel, and pictured it as it could have been in 1927. Watched the taxicabs roaring past and the hurry of people never pausing for a moment.

Where TJ would have been located…

It’s been a while, I’ll admit, since I’ve thought back on Speakeasy, or even so much on the 1920s. But it’s nearly the ‘20s all over again and it’s gotten the cogs turning, thinking about how times now are different to times then. A conversation with a friend recently also got me lingering on my novel and Heath and Art and their underground sanctuary. I suspect, maybe, it won’t be the last you see of these fine gentlemen.

For now, I’d like to leave you all with a short extract from the beginning of Speakeasy, that I hope encapsulates a little of the love letter to 1920s New York that I hoped to write. And, should you feel so inclined to read more, the digital edition of Speakeasy is available for just $2.99 this month only on Amazon and the Interlude Press store. Print editions also available at regular price.

“Son,” his father says as he leaves the townhouse that morning. “Son, a man is not defined by the school he attends or the merits he earns. A man is defined by the choices he makes.” 

His father smiles, then. His fingernails dig into Heath’s shoulder, making him wince. “I know you’ll make the right one,” he finishes, and dismisses him after Heath’s assurance that he will be back in time for lunch. 

Heath lets out a breath. June 29, 1927: a week since his twenty- first birthday. The sun is warm on the back of his neck as the soles of his shoes smack gently against the sidewalk. He slows his pace; he had all but dashed from the house, keen to get out from under the microscopic gaze of his father and mother that has lingered since he returned to the city. 

A graduate now, he twists the ring on his finger, stamped with the Yale seal. As his father wore, too, and his father before him. The Johnson men have been attending Yale since the middle of the last century. Economics or law are the only acceptable choices of study for people like them—according to his father, anyway. Heath chose to major in the former, if only because he couldn’t bear the idea of becoming a goddamn lawyer. A minor in philosophy because what his father didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. 

Heath idles down Fifth Avenue, breathing in the cocktail of fresh- cut grass and motor oil from the busier Madison one block over. He’s missed the city. New Haven is quaint and small, and he scarcely had to worry about having his toes run over by a speeding taxicab driver. But New York, Manhattan—it’s his home. It’s been four long years since he spent more than just the summer or a Christmas break in the city where he grew up. 

He steps into the park, though the sun is steadily moving higher into the sky and he knows the air will be more stifling beneath the trees. July is just around the corner, and he can feel it. July in the city means his shirt sticking to his spine, his hair slicked back as much with sweat as with pomade by mid-afternoon. He already longs for fall and the cooler months to come.