The Soul of New York City

Description: An Omahan humility gives Andersen a different perspective on the city.

Transcript:

I think it shaped . . . I think . . . I think having grown up in Omaha – specifically Nebraska, the Midwest – has shaped me quite a bit. I think going from Omaha essentially to the east – and New York, specifically – put me in a kind of . . . made me feel a little bit like a permanent outsider. If not an outsider, at least somebody who could see the . . . the strangeness, and magnificence, and ugliness and . . . of New York with a certain amount of awe that hasn’t quite left me. I think also there is a cliché – but like most clichés a true one – that there’s this thing in the Midwest of . . . which amounts to a kind of enforced humility. Sometimes a mock humility, but the nevertheless a sense of . . . of you can’t . . . you shouldn’t toot your own horn too much. And I think that has stuck with me. And then of course the particulars of my parents and . . . and my family background entirely apart from the Midwest – or Omaha particularly – has had a dramatic influence on my life.