Two Mills and Norristown
The imaginary town of Two Mills is based on Jerry Spinelli’s childhood town of Norristown, PA. Spinelli has said that material from the story was inspired by his childhood experiences there, and a number of geographical correspondences confirm this. Norristown, like Two Mills, is across the Schuylkill River from Bridgeport, and neighboring towns include Conshohocken, Jeffersonville and Worcester, all of which are mentioned in the novel. The Elmwood Park Zoo is in Norristown, and Valley Forge, where Maniac wanders, is nearby as well.
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Famous quotes containing the word mills:
“Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–62)