Writing New York

New York is a broad canvass that writers have taken on for centuries and in so doing both celebrated and debated its greatness. Lopate has gathered an amazing collection of essays and stories from Washington Irving to Stephen Crane to John Cheevor all the way to Don DeLillo with even a piece from Robert Moses (the very much debated urban planner). I love virtually all things New York (the lone exception perhaps be La Guardia airport my gateway to the city) and this was a gift to read. I was exposed to a host of new authors while at the same time feeling like I was experiencing the development of New York through its seminal historic and social moments (much like the main character in Pete Hamill's "Forever"). And Lopate's introduction leaps off the pages and captures the fast tempo and urgency of the city, he writes: "New York's essence, literary or otherwise, grows out of the street experience, the basis for an aesthetic of a ragged, miraculous simultaneity. New York has from the start been an extroverted, not a covert, place; its man-made geography and network of mass transports provide the basic cue, the beat from which all else follows." And from this fine introduction, a steady stream of stories makes its way not unlike the commuters, tourists, immigrants, delivery persons, hawkers, activists, money-makers, police and others have done for many decades on the vibrant and contradictory streets of New York.

An immense collection the Big Town, arguably still the most exciting city in the world. It begins with Washington Irving contemplating the meaning of Manhattan and includes works of tens of the first- rate writers who have been influenced by the Big Town. It includes diaries, journals, letters, stories, poems, essays. Over one - hundred writers give their take on the City which Bellow once said includes every single human type and kind. It touches too upon the vast worlds of inner feeling , the effects the City has on the soul. So there is the lonely independent cry of 'Bartleby' 'I prefer not to' not far from the celebratory sound of Whitman's 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry'. It has the Broadway of Damon Runyan and the Lower East Side of Abraham Cahan. Worlds within worlds , a true treasure for all those who know and love the big town.

The tale of New York City is one of the most interesting in world history. Starting as a humble colony by different European hands, it has emerged as the financial capital of the world in the past 100 years, symbolizing the dominance of the sole superpower in the world. Perhaps the ultimate melting pot, the city is home to among the most diverse populations in the planet. "Writing New York: A Literary Anthology" captures the zeitgeist of this most modern of metropolises. A literary compendium of famous and not-so-famous, local and foreign authors give a representative view of the city in it's varied distinctions. The energy, loneliness, alienation, joy, triumph, success, failure, and unique culture of Gotham are adequately portrayed in this vast portrait. Charting the course of the city's 200 years, the early efforts of Washington Irving and James Kirke Paulding give the reader some observations of the city in it's infancy. Antebellum accounts by foreign visitors like Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, and Fanny Kemble reveal the competitive and jaundiced eye representatives of the old world cast on the new with it's "great experiment". One of the marvels of this anthology is the glimpses of 19th-Century New York life, vividly shown in works like the excerpt from Nathaniel Parker Willis' "Open-Air Musings in the City"; the pressure of commercial-capitalist society in Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener"; and everyday life in George G. Foster's "The Eating-Houses". The personal diaries of Philip Hone and George Templeton Strong are fascinating accounts of the city from the eyes of prominent individuals who had the vantage point of observing their times within the upper echelons of New York society. Of course, New York would not be completely represented without the diverse cultures and ethnic distinctions it is known for. The narrative of Wong Chin Foo on his personal travail in starting a Chinese newspaper in Victorian America is a humorous and painful account of the country's well-known dark past. The African-American experience is competently depicted in James Weldon Johnson's transparent prose and Langston Hughes' reminiscence of the Harlem Renaissance. Abraham Cahan describes the Jewish experience, while Bernardo Vega and Oscar Hijuelos chronicle the Latin side of the story with trademark verve and vivacity. And many more. Not only is prose touched on, but other literary genres are adequately represented. Poetical giants as diverse as Walt Whitman, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Hart Crane call on their muse to evoke their paean's to the city. Essays depicting the city's various impressions on individuals like Stephen Graham and Vivian Gornick are rendered in memorable style. Like most anthologies, the book has it's weaknesses. Worthily inclusive writings on New York by E.B. White, Federico Garcia Lorca, Albert Camus, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and Andy Warhol, etc., are not included. The quality of the writing dips towards the end

This collection was the centerpiece of a course I recently took on Literary NY. Every piece of writing in this collection is memorable, evoking the timelessness of the place, from Washington Irving to Joan Didion, with a wide spectrum between. There are wonderful observational and personal essays, socio-political satires, poetry and short fiction all highlighting the on-going phenomena of this most fascinating of cities. The writers, some well-known and some lost in their time, all record from the heart. What struck me most while reading these wonderful pieces, is how some things truly never change, and how so many of the 'progressive' changes irrevocably destroyed the natural rhythms and space. There is something of interest here for everyone. I strongly recommend this collection.

This anthology of fiction and memoirs about America's first city offers as vivid a picture of New York City life and attitudes as any history book. Open the book at random, and there is something worth reading: George Templeton Strong wondering in his diary: "Is it the doom of all men in this century to be weighed down with the incumbrance of a desire to make money and save money, all their days?" (in 1852!); Stephen Crane writing of a man's moral dilemma over the false arrest of a possible prostitute; Ralph Ellison noting in "New York, 1936" that: "in the hustle and bustle of that most theatrical of American cities, one was accepted on the basis of what one appeared to be." Then there's the fiction and the anthropological excerpts which offer pleasures of their own. One of Damon Runyon's stories about the "Guys and Dolls" of Broadway is here, a tougher story than one would expect from him. A selection from Oscar Hijuelos' "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" is here as well. Joseph Mitchell's "Up in the Old Hotel," an observation piece written for The New Yorker and Zora Neale Hurston's "Story in Harlem Slang." "Writing New York" is a convivial convention, probably the only gathering of New York wits and writers and reporters we're likely to see this side of heaven. Reading it alongside "Gotham" from Oxford University Press fleshes out a portrait of a great city that may be down at times, but can never be counted out.