Cricket Playing in America: Real and Imagined Places of New York in Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland

Abstract In his novel Netherland, Joseph O’Neill discusses several issues that arise for a contemporary wanderer or immigrant, namely, issues of adjustment, cultural transition, becoming visible, etc. The search for a new home is accompanied by the idea of a new place and the memory of the native place. Immigrants provide a particular perspective of the city from the position of an outsider. New York is the city that allows seeing the correlation between a geographic perception and the idea of a place that is formed by an immigrant. Real places of New York and their fictional representations in O’Neill’s novel become the focus of this study. The geocritical approach is employed as a productive tool for the analysis of New York spatiality and myth-making.