NIGHTHAWKS
EDWARD HOPPER, 1942
Sad is when somebody admits something. Nobody in here is admitting a thing. Everybody in this diner is doing that very human move where your whole inner life is coming apart, but outwardly you're like, no, no, I'm just having coffee. Look, nobody knows these people. Hopper doesn't give us that. But come on. The guy with his back to us? He said one wrong thing forty minutes ago and has been silently re-editing the sentence ever since. The couple came together. Technically. But she's somewhere else already. He's doing math with the time, trying to prove the night can still be saved. It can't. And the waiter? The waiter knows. That's the job. Refill the coffee. Wipe the counter. Let people not talk. And then Hopper does the killer thing. There's no door. Not hidden. Not subtle. Just no way out. Nobody really arrived, and nobody's leaving. It's not a diner. It's limbo with pecan pie. Now, the timing. Hopper finished this about six weeks after Pearl Harbor. The whole country is suddenly talking about courage and sacrifice, and Hopper paints the hour when you don't feel brave. You just feel awake. The diner was real, sort of. Hopper said it was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue, where two streets meet. People have hunted for the spot ever since. Never really found it. And ask him what the painting means, and you get the most Hopper answer on record. Unconsciously, probably, he said, he was painting the loneliness of a large city. Unconsciously. Probably. The man hedged twice in one sentence. It left town fast, though. Finished in January, sold by spring. Three thousand dollars, to the Art Institute of Chicago. Their director reportedly said it was as fine as a Homer. So the most New York painting there is, hangs in Chicago. Which feels right, somehow. Nobody in it is where they want to be either. And if you've ever stayed out ten minutes longer than necessary, just so nobody could ask, "you okay?" then you've been here too.