as if he was passing through anweb. He knew that he wasnleaving South [sic]. His handsngripped hard upon the hinges ofnhis knees, his muscles flexed, hisnteeth clamped tightly, and hisnjaws were hard. The train rollednover, he was North again. ^nHard and sharp and hot and taut—n”Every young man from the South has feltnthis precise and formal geography ofnthe spirit,” Wolfe claims, “this tension ofnthe nerves, . . . this gritting of the teethnand hardening of the jaws, this sensenof desperate anticipation.”nWell, all I feel is indigestion, but thenpoint is that Wolfe gets it right aboutnsomething physical happening to Southernnboys—some of us, anyway—whennwe leave the South. We’re sort of humanndowsing rods for Southernness. If younwant to map the region, maybe youncould just point us north and draw thenRolaid line.n* * *nBy the way, although I think Jake andnI respond—OK, maybe over-respond—nto real regional differences, something elsenwas going on with Wolfe’s young Southerners.nThey were reacting not just tonreal differences—strange accents, strangenfoods, strange-looking people—but tonexpected ones, expectations nurtured byntheir own needs and imaginations. ” Theynfelt they were invading a foreign country,”nWolfe writes; “they were steelingnthemselves for conflict [and] lookingnforward with an almost desperate apprehensionnto their encounter with thencity.” (“Desperate anticipation” and “desperatenapprehension” in the same paragraph,nbut that’s old Tom for you.) ” Theynwere also looking forward to that encounternwith exultancy and hope, withnfervor, passion, and high aspiration.”n”Not me,” Jake wrote in the margin.nWell, not me, either. But for a certainnsort of dreamy young Southerner thennorth—New York City in particular—nhas always had a special fascination,nfrom afar. Listen to Doug Marlette,nthe Pulitzer Priz e-winning cartoonistnwho draws “Kudzu.” A few years ago,nwhen he moved from Georgia to thenBig Apple, Marlette felt obliged to explainnhimself to his Southern friendsnand neighbors. “New York’s energy, excitementnand vitality have always attractednme,” he wrote. ” It’s the show—the culturalnvortex of the race, the storm centernof human achievement.”nAnd, he continued, “it holds a specialnplace in the dreamscapes of my youth andnthe mythic underpinnings of my buddingnambition.” Maflette recalled how hisnimage of The City came to be:nAs a child growing up in smallntowns in North Carolina and Mississippi,nI visited New York andnstudied its environs only fromntelevision, movies, books, andnmagazines. The media initiatednme into the secrets, mysteries, andnallures of the city.nI learned about Macy’s fromnMiracle on 34th Street. I knew thatnRob and Laura Petrie on the DicknVan Dyke Show lived in suburbannNew Rochelle. The offices of Madnmagazine were located on LexingtonnAvenue. They made fun ofnad-men on Madison Avenue.nThose places and frames of referencenwere as much a part of thengeographies of my imagination asnwere Judea and Samaria from mynSunday school lessons or Vicksburgnand Chancellorsville from my historynbooks. And I imbued thosenalien landscapes and cultures withna vitality and reality that seemednachingly absent from my own.nMany young Southerners have felt thatnway, responding less to actual places thannto their ideas of those places—ideas thatnmay be little more than stereotypes. Butnthere’s an irony here. When people donthat, they can help to create the factsnthey’ve imagined. New York’s an excitingnplace, in part, because it’s full of youngnprovincials who have gone there for itsnexcitement. I think of four guys I grewnup with in East Tennessee. One is gay,nand last I heard was in Los Angeles,ndoing what I don’t know. Another is anUnitarian minister’in a classic New Englandnsmall town. The third is an avantgardenprofessor of French at an Ivy Leaguenuniversity. And the fourth lives in MarinnCounty, where he sells motorcycles andncomputers, caters Japanese food, andngives instmction in some heretical offshootnof Rolfing. Notice that by doing whatnthey want in settings where it’s anconventional thing to do, my friendsnare contributing to the persistence ofnregional differences: making New Englandnlook more like my stereotype of NewnEngland, California more like my ideanof California. 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