Notebook On Cities And Culture

Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen's Vesterbro with Per Šmidl, author of the bestseller Chop Suey, the essay Victim of Welfare, and the new novel Wagon 537 Christiania. They discuss the surprise foreigners, and especially Americans, feel upon discovering that a self-governing commune like Christiana has existed for over forty years in the middle of Copenhagen; how Christiana began as "a spiritual venture" and became "the last and greatest attempt Western man made to rid himself of the shackles of capitalism"; the criticism Danish society allows, but the price you must pay if you make it; how his speaking out resulted in his "confinement" to unpublishability; normal society as a corset, and the way life in a place like Christiana releases it; what it means when the protagonist of Wagon 357 Christiana discovers he can't urinate; the question of whether one moves into Christiana because of an awareness of wanting to live differently, or simply because of a diffused feeling of something having gone wrong; the