Remembrance of Things Past

The overeducated amongst you will recognize the headline above as the title of French novelist Marcel Proust’s most famous work. Published in English in 1922, the title's a woeful mistranslation.

Proust translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff chose Remembrance of Things Past to evoke a line in a Shakespearean Sonnet, assuming the “new” title would appeal to English-speaking readers. Needless to say, Mr. Moncrieff didn’t get out much.

Seventy years later, D. J. Enright righted the wrong. The novel's current title – In Search of Lost Time – is a more faithful translation of the original French À la recherche du temps perdu.

Once Man's Trash...

I’m pro-pedantry because I’m that guy. And because In Search of Lost Time personifies and encapsulates my endless fascination with old neglected buildings.

I'm attracted to empty commercial structures with adornments that serve no functional purpose. Crumbling Art Deco buildings whose swoopy, aerodynamic shapes project unbridled optimism. Industrial architecture left to rack and ruin when its commercial use became unsustainable.

I stop to admire abandoned department stores. Wooden gas stations being slowly devoured by nature. Anything that invites what’s called “urban exploration." But I have an special love of dissolute, decaying downtowns like Paris, Texas (above).

I'm fascinated by forlorn community hubs bypassed by bypasses, big box stores, standalone restaurants and Amazon. Cities whose glory days are a hundred years behind them. Whose buildings speak of another time, another people.

These relics resonate with my increasing awareness of life passing. They're physical representations of the sense of lost time that comes with old age.

Rhode Island Redux?

Part of my attraction is down to the fact that Knoxville is more than a bit like my home town.

Strolling through either city, it takes very little imagination to conjure-up the ghosts of the past. To visualize what it was like to live long before TV, cell phones, the internet. Before the hard times.

Providence's industrial economy hit the skids at the turn of the last century. Knoxville's industrial economy nosedived during the Great Depression. Both cities spent decades in the doldrums, impoverished shells of their former selves.

Today's Providence calls itself the Renaissance City. In terms of employment and general prosperity it's nothing of the sort. In contrast, Knoxville is on its uppers.

Reflecting its renewed prosperity, Knoxville has reclaimed its mid-1800’s to the early 20th century downtown from the ravages of time, disinterest and decay.

Downtown Knoxville is now as it was in its heyday: a walkable city with unmistakable echoes of its past. Especially Old City.

Entering the Alchemy cigar lounge, for example, is like stepping back in time. I half expect The Shining’s bartender Lloyd to set me up (so to speak).

My brick-walled South Gay Street condo sits above what was once a department store - and is again. I have immediate access to a farrago of thriving restaurants, bars, stores, theaters and offices, all occupying immaculately renovated buildings.

That said, there are still plenty of pockets of Knoxville proper that haven't been touched by gentrification.

Walking downtown from the historic 4th and Gill neighborhood, I pass commercial strips clinging to life via “antique" shops and tattoo parlors, their doorways providing the unhoused nightly shelter.

These unloved architectural artifacts are nothing like as "quaint" as downtown Knoxville. Or as sanitized as my last home base.

Austin, Texas

I watched developers destroy downtown Austin by building enormous mixed use skyscrapers. They transformed Rainey Street from a parade of small houses used as friendly bars and clubs into a line of towering condos.

Austin hasn’t lost its soul, but you'd forgiven for thinking so. The live music scene still has a home, but there's less and less there, there. More and more glass-sided canyons channeling tech workers into buildings filled with identical cubicles, lit by computer screens and ambition.

I have no fear that downtown Knoxville will follow suit. Props to Knox Heritage, a powerful protector of the city’s architectural jewels, supported by the Knoxville Historic Preservation Fund, with Knoxville’s Historic Zoning Commission standing guard.

And yet, at the same time, Knoxville’s anodyne suburbs are exploding.

While the ‘burbs provide residents with a safe comfortable place to raise, educate and entertain a family, they’re devoid of any sense of place or history. Past, present or future.

It's a deficit that draws people downtown, ensuring its continued commercial success. So there is that. And this piece of sage advice...

No Matter Where You Go, There You Are

I’m fortunate enough to have the funds and freedom to choose a more personally satisfying backdrop for my golden years. And I know that one's physical environment is nowhere near as important as the people who occupy it. Or the thoughts in your head.

When those get onerous, I can now ride my motorcycle into Knoxville's nearby mountains. I can stop and savor the incomparable architectural genius of nature. As one of Proust's characters proclaimed...

“I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinancy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.”

Remembrance of trees past? I'll take it!

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