Uptown/Downtown in Old Charleston , livre ebook

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69

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English

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2013

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69

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English

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Ebooks

2013

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A series of briskly paced renderings of the Holy City's dual identities, written by an acclaimed native son.

Growing up in Charleston in the 1930s and 1940s, accomplished storyteller Louis Rubin witnessed firsthand the subtle gradations of caste and class among neighborhoods, from south of Broad Street where established families, ancestral glories, and traditional mores held sway, to the various enclaves of Uptown in which middle-class and blue-collar families went about their own diverse lives and routines. Changing circumstances within his own family impelled his absorption in what seemed to be two separate worlds, and granted him a remarkable perspective into Charleston's evolving identity as an historic seaport on the cusp of modernity during the Great Depression and the onset of World War II.

In Uptown/Downtown in Old Charleston, Rubin draws on equal parts autobiography and imagination in a series of kinetic episodes that capture the atmosphere of the Holy City during this era when the population had not yet swelled above sixty-five thousand, when oldtimers still spoke with awe of the 1886 earthquake, and when the coming social and economic revolutions that shaped the latter half of the twentieth century had not yet found a toehold in the old city. Rubin's wide-eyed narrator is an earnest and observant guide, who ably takes readers on excursions to and through recognizable landmarks, including Adger's Wharf, the Battery, Union Terminal, the shops of King Street, the High School of Charleston, the Majestic Theater, and the College of Charleston. With youthful glee he atches the barges and shrimp trawlers along the waterfront, rides streetcars down Rutledge Avenue and trains to Savannah and Richmond, paddles the Ashley River in a leaky homemade boat, pitches left-handed for the youngest team in the Twilight Baseball League, ponders the curious chanting coming from the Jewish Community Center, and catches magical glimpses of the Morris Island lighthouse from atop the Folly Beach Ferris wheel. His fascination with the gas-electric Boll Weevil train epitomizes his appreciation for the freedom of movement between the worlds of Uptown and Downtown that defines his youth in Charleston.

This too is the story of a young writer finding the skills, subjects, and ambitions that will later define his career. Whether recounting the banter of a panel of Charleston authors speaking at his school or his first days as a cub reporter, Rubin's narrator captures the moments and influences that conspire to make a professional wordsmith of him. The collection ends with a homecoming to Charleston by our narrator, then a young man in his early twenties, as his inbound train is greeted by familiar vistas of the city as well as by views he had never encountered before. This is the city Rubin called home, where surprising discoveries were to be found both in the burgeoning newness of Uptown and the storied legacies of Downtown.


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Date de parution

07 juin 2013

Nombre de lectures

2

EAN13

9781611172683

Langue

English

UPTOWN/DOWNTOWN INOLDCHARLESTON
UPTOWN/DOWNTOWN INOLDCHARLESTON
© 2010 Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2010 Paperback edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2011 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2013
www.sc.edu/uscpress
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Rubin, Louis Decimus, 1923– Uptown/downtown in old Charleston : sketches and stories / Louis D. Rubin, Jr. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-57003-909-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Rubin, Louis Decimus, 1923– 2. Jews—South Carolina—Charleston—Biography. 3. Charleston (S.C.)—Biography. 1. Title. F279.C49J5788 2010 975.7'91504924092—dc22 [B]
ISBN 978-1-61117-268-3 (ebook)
2009051101
For Eva I dedicate this book to the Onlie Belovèd, fifty-eight years after it got under way.
Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue: Adger’s Wharf 1 The Shores of Tripoli 2 Riddle Me This: A Trio of Incidents 3 The Man at the Beach 4 The Left-Handed Glove 5 The Boll Weevil and the Triple Play 6Finisterre 7 “Do You Know Your Charleston?” 8 A Sort of a Saga 9 The St. Anthony Chorale Epilogue: The Route of the Boll Weevil
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