Let the Great World Spin

This is the shortest chapter. It captures a moment in urban history when graffiti artists ruled pop culture. The young photographer Fernando Marcano knows instinctively what is happening and how creative and adventurous the tag artists can be. He records their work, especially from subway cars moving through the tunnels. In the end, McCann uses the young man to create an iconic image of the tightrope walker that appears on page 237. McCann uses an actual photograph from the event, but Fernando is fictional.

This chapter gives a new and different perspective on the tightrope walker’s performance. There are three computer hackers in California who follow the events by finding phone numbers with their computers. Then they get two New Yorkers, including a secretary at a Wall Street law firm, to describe what is happening in real time.  

This intense chapter records Tillie’s stream of consciousness as she experiences life in jail. Her daughter is dead, she is facing imprisonment upstate, and her granddaughters have been placed outside her family. Tillie is miserable, regretful, and guilty. She reviews her life and feels especially bad about letting her daughter get involved in drugs and prostitution. Tillie thinks often of suicide. 

At the end of the chapter Tillie commits suicide.