Don't Be Mistaken, Says Author, Seattle Is Not Friendly

"People go around tasting cities as if they were desserts," Jonathan Raban was saying. "They forget that cities are places in which people grow up and work."

Then Jonathan added: "I get so tired of hearing what a friendly place Seattle is. It's not necessarily friendly, it's civil. It is polite, but not friendly."

I think I introduced you to Jonathan Raban a few months ago. He is an Englishman, once of London, who has made Seattle his home. As he puts it, "The choices at the time were Seattle, the Florida Keys or Manhattan. Seattle won hands down."

Raban is a writer of first rank. In about two weeks, his new book, "Hunting Mr. Heartbreak" will hit the book stalls. It has an eloquent, perceptive chapter on his adopted home.

At the moment he is working on a 6,000-word piece on Seattle for Travel-Holiday magazine.

Normally such a travel piece would set a Lesser Seattleite's teeth on edge, but Jonathan's stuff is far more sophisticated, more perceptive, than the usual come-visit-us poopery you read about this city.

"So we are not such a friendly city after all," I said.

"Of course not. That is where visitors make their mistake. What Seattle people are is civil, or polite, not friendly. People visit Seattle and find the people `so friendly,' that they decide to move here.

"It comes as quite a shock to them to find out that this friendliness doesn't really exist. Seattle people have their own lives to live. The politeness, or civility, is a way of keeping people at arm's length."

Jonathan is a fairly tall, wiry fellow, with a quick, active mind. His thoughts are expressed colorfully and with a succinctness common to many well-spoken English natives.

Raban sees cities - well, Seattle is a "soft city" as compared to a "hard city." By Jonathan's definition a "hard city" is usually smaller - people get to know everybody else, they take the same roads, the same streets and they must live in a way that conforms to the norms of that city.

The hard city dictates the way you will live.

But in a "soft city," like Seattle, he says, "you can make up a private world within it. You can shape it to your own ends.

"You make your own city out of it. You choose where you want to live. You know your city by neighborhoods, you communicate by choice and by telephone and by appointment.

"People in `soft cities' tend not to want to know the people next door. As I say, you can make up your own private world in a soft city."

I tried to dump a little Lesser Seattle propaganda on Jonathan, although we both recognize that Lesser Seattle is an impossible dream, such is the human habit of procreation.

I retreated into a Lesser Seattle tenet - that zoning, urban planning are both necessary and desirable.

"Oh, I'm afraid we're going to get into a roaring argument about that," he laughed. "No, I am very skeptical about zoning laws and many forms of planning.

"You see, cities have their own organic existence. They evolve naturally as the years go by. As for being against growth, that can't be.

"Being against the growth of a city is like King Canute trying to order back the rising tide."

Jonathan has this theory about Seattle - that it really has something for everybody, people find things in it that remind them of home.

To someone from Japan, Mount Rainier is their Mount Fuji. People from Sweden and Denmark can look at Puget Sound and easily feel at home. To people from Korea, much of Seattle reminds them of home. As for London, the rain in Seattle is like London's.

"A funny thing happened to me when I was in Guntersville, Ala.," he said. "I told a man that I was moving to Seattle. He said, `Oh, you'll like it in Seattle. You'll find it just like Guntersville - lots of green, lots of water.' "

"What is your Seattle?" I asked.

"Seattle keeps me alert," he said. "It keeps me looking at it. Seattle is a soft city, full of escapes. A city of bridges, I love bridges. My Seattle is a place of boats and writing."

He laughed again. "You might call it a `literary aquatic' city. I love its bookishness. A New York publisher friend recently told me that Seattle is keeping the book trade alive. There are pockets of bookstores all over the city.

"I have my own sailboat moored down on the Lake Washington Ship Canal. I once sailed around Ireland and the British Isles alone. Sometimes I just go down and sit on my boat and look at the water. I love to do that."

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.