But since there are many repeat tourists to New York, perhaps they might try it on a later visit; and happily so, less because of what they might find at the various stops than because there are few ways to experience New York as pleasurably as by looking at it from the water. The recent proposal by the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance for a harbor loop ferry system that would make up to fifteen stops in the Upper Bay, as an extension of the mass transit system, is exciting as well as sensible. Like a set of extra highways already in place, the waterways could cut down on travel time, expense, and pollution. But beyond whatever logistical, financial, and political problems may arise in instituting such a desirable plan, the harbor would have to be understood again by the public as more than an archaic abstraction-as something functionally real. I wonder what Ernest Poole would have made of such a turnabout. Poole, a journalist of the progressive camp, who wrote crusading pieces about the East Side slums, chose in his first novel, The Harbor, to portray the port of New York as the very symbol of reality. Poole used the terms harbor шА port interchangeably, and when he wrote the novel, the port of 'The last writer to understand it that way was probably Alfred Kazin, who penned a 1986 essay called "The Harbor Is My New York." Can you imagine a young writerabouttown using that title today York was the largest in the world, not only in the amount of corn it handled, but also in the length of its available waterfront. The Harbor (194) is a Bildungsroman about a young man, Billy, who above the Brooklyn waterfront, overlooking "a harbor that to me fftoWS up strange and terrible," with its "sweaty, hairy dockers and saloons." His father owns a warehouse on the docks, and by Oedipal extension Billy identifies everything that is patriarchal, brutal, and materialistic with the harbor. "From that day the harbor became for me a big grim place to be let alone like my father. A place immeasurably stronger than I-like my father-and like him harsh and indifferent." His exschoolteacher mother, who "had come to hate the harbor," encourages Billy toward idealism and the finer things in life. At the same time, he is drawn to the ragged waterfront kids, and mesmerized by the sight of "a big fat girl half dressed, giggling and queer, quite drunk" who seems to represent the lifeforce at its greasiest and sexiest. Later, leaving no metaphor untried, Billy says, "I was a toy piano. And the harbor was a giant who played on me till I rattled inside." Poole works the harbor symbolism so painstakingly that there is scarcely room for the characters to come alive. Though the novel has its moments, it's not a great book. I read it twice, wanting desperately to find a lost masterpiece, so that I could rediscover and defend the neglected Ernest Poole. As it happens, he writes with florid enthusiasm, like a poor man's O.