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“We experience life as continuity, and only after it falls away, after it becomes the past, do we see its discontinuities,” (pg 155).  How have you seen this present in both the novel and your life?

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How does a person’s initial judgement of individuals and groups of people leave them unwilling to dig deeper and learn their story?  Compare this to Dr. Maillotte’s views in chapter eleven.

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In relation to the janitor’s story, how does society ignore and/or look down upon those it perceives to be inferior?

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Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, pasts that others are not allowed to read, accumulated times that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state--deCerteau 108

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We do not actually see him at work. He is an observer, not a participant.

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"there is no place that is not HAUNTED [emphasis mine] by many different spirits"--de Certeau, pg/ 108

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Seth and Carla-- lived next door
disgusted by dead body next door

There is a freedom in not being bound by relationships.

Expectations in the city to not involve each other in our neighbors' lives (and help them) seem to produce conditions of exclusion, abjection. No person is self-made.

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As a psychiatrist, he maintains his patient-confidentiality agreement throughout his thoughts, such as when he calls his patient "V." (pg. 26)

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Georg Simmel argues that the modern city is a place in which we experience greater freedom, but that our experience of freedom is not always felt positively.

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Class is evident in storefronts. Differences in infrastructure mark differences in class.

Walls exclude; bridges include.

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"Walking through busy parts of town meant I laid
eyes on more people, hundreds more, thousands even, than I was accustomed to seeing in the course of a day, but the impress
of these countless faces did nothing to assuage my feelings of
isolation; if anything, it intensified them." (6)

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The taxi driver is upset that Julius (who he views to have similar experiences as him) would not be nice to him.

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"To practice space is [...] to be other and to move toward the other"--deCerteau pg. 110

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"To practice space is [...] to be other and to move toward the other"--deCerteau pg. 110

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You can feel lonely and isolated despite being in a crowded physical space.

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So many people in a singular space makes it difficult not to interact with others. Yet, somehow, people are strangers to one another, lonely.

Proximity does not necessarily produce community.

"The city is fantastic place because it is a site of great indifference."

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V.'s book about the sufferings of Native Americans caused her to feel depressed. Taking on that history - which still affected her - was mentally taxing to the point where she needed to take a break.

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It provides his motivation to walk around the city.

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Julius' status as an immigrant and a black man has given him a sense of isolation in which he doesn't belong to any one community.

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How does Julius's career affect his role as narrator?

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How does this novel represent the mental health effects of abjection

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How does New York City, or places in it, act as a setting for human interaction as well as human independence? How does the city itself function to help abject persons or to include them?