MADreads

New York, New York…

March 31st, 2008 Sarah - Alicia Ashman

…it’s a helluva town!

Pet subjects.  We all have them.  Some people like to read everything they can find about the Founding Fathers.  Others can’t get enough science books, or memoirs.  For others, novels set in the Wild West is what it’s all about.  For me?  I’ll read anything you give me about New York City.

New York City is just one pet subject for me among many, but it’s a rewarding one, not only because a lot of novels are set there, but also because so many writers themselves live in New York City and write nonfiction about it.  One such example is novelist Colson Whitehead, best known for his titles John Henry Days and The Intuitionist; he’s also written the short prose poetry book The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts.

Those readers looking for a story or guidebook-like information about New York City will not find what they’re looking for in this book.  What they will find is beautiful, evocative writing:

“Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next.  We see ourselves in this city every day when we walk down the sidewalk and catch our reflections in store windows, seek ourselves in this city each time we reminisce about what was there fifteen, ten, forty years ago, because all our old places are proof that we were here.  One day the city we built will be gone, and when it goes, we go.  When the buildings fall, we topple, too.

Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us…” (pp. 9-10.)

I’ve never lived in New York, only visited.  But I think I became a little bit of a New Yorker when I read that.

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction, Poetry, Short Stories