The Colossus of New York
A City in Thirteen Parts
(Sprache: Englisch)
New York vom Morgen, wenn die Müllmänner kommen, bis in die Nacht. New York für die Eingeborenen und die Fremden, New York, beschrieben von einzelnen Stimmen an unterschiedlichen Orten wie Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Coney Island oder...
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Produktinformationen zu „The Colossus of New York “
New York vom Morgen, wenn die Müllmänner kommen, bis in die Nacht. New York für die Eingeborenen und die Fremden, New York, beschrieben von einzelnen Stimmen an unterschiedlichen Orten wie Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Coney Island oder Broadway. Colson Whitehead, New Yorker von Geburt und aus Überzeugung, zeichnet ein sehr persönliches Bild einer Stadt, in der nichts gewöhnlich ist.
Klappentext zu „The Colossus of New York “
In a dazzlingly original work of nonfiction, the two time Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys recreates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise, and the heartbreak of New York. Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in or spent time in the greatest of American cities.
A masterful evocation of the city that never sleeps, The Colossus of New York captures the city s inner and outer landscapes in a series of vignettes, meditations, and personal memories. Colson Whitehead conveys with almost uncanny immediacy the feelings and thoughts of longtime residents and of newcomers who dream of making it their home; of those who have conquered its challenges; and of those who struggle against its cruelties.
Whitehead s style is as multilayered and multifarious as New York itself: Switching from third person, to first person, to second person, he weaves individual voices into a jazzy musical composition that perfectly reflects the way we experience the city. There is a funny, knowing riff on what it feels like to arrive in New York for the first time; a lyrical meditation on how the city is transformed by an unexpected rain shower; and a wry look at the ferocious battle that is commuting. The plaintive notes of the lonely and dispossessed resound in one passage, while another captures those magical moments when the city seems to be talking directly to you, inviting you to become one with its rhythms.
The Colossus of New York is a remarkable portrait of life in the big city. Ambitious in scope, gemlike in its details, it is at once an unparalleled tribute to New York and the ideal introduction to one of the most exciting writers working today.
Look for Colson Whitehead s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!
Lese-Probe zu „The Colossus of New York “
City LimitsI'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don't know about you. Maybe you're from here, too, and sooner or later it will come out that we used to live a block away from each other and didn't even know it. Or maybe you moved here a couple years ago for a job. Maybe you came here for school. Maybe you saw the brochure. The city has spent a considerable amount of time and money putting the brochure together, what with all the movies, TV shows and songs--the whole If You Can Make It There business. The city also puts a lot of effort into making your hometown look really drab and tiny, just in case you were wondering why it's such a drag to go back sometimes.
No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge. That before the internet cafe plugged itself in, you got your shoes resoled in the mom-and-pop operation that used to be there. You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.
You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it. Maybe you were in a cab leaving the airport when the skyline first roused itself into view. All your worldly possessions were in the trunk, and in your hand you held an address on a piece of paper. Look: there's the Empire State Building, over there are the Twin Towers. Somewhere in that fantastic, glorious mess was the address on the piece of paper, your first home here. Maybe your parents dragged you here for a vacation when you were a kid and towed you up and down the gigantic avenues to shop for Christmas gifts. The only skyscrapers visible from your stroller were the legs of adults, but you got to know the ground pretty well and started to wonder why some sidewalks sparkle at certain angles, and others don't. Maybe you came to visit your old buddy, the one who moved here last summer, and there was some mix-up as to where
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you were supposed to meet. You stepped out of Penn Station into the dizzying hustle of Eighth Avenue and fainted. Freeze it there: that instant is the first brick in your city.
I started building my New York on the uptown No. 1 train. My first city memory is of looking out a subway window as the train erupted from the tunnel on the way to 125th Street and palsied up onto the elevated tracks. It's the early 70's, so everything is filthy. Which means everything is still filthy, because that is my city and I'm sticking to it. I still call it the Pan Am Building, not out of affectation, but because that's what it is. For that new transplant from Des Moines, who is starting her first week of work at a Park Avenue South insurance firm, that titan squatting over Grand Central is the Met Life Building, and for her it always will be. She is wrong, of course--when I look up there, I clearly see the gigantic letters spelling out Pan Am, don't I? And of course I am wrong, in the eyes of the old-timers who maintain the myth that there was a time before Pan Am.
History books and public television documentaries are always trying to tell you all sorts of "facts" about New York. That Canal Street used to be a canal. That Bryant Park used to be a reservoir. It's all hokum. I've been to Canal Street, and the only time I ever saw a river flow through it was during the last water-main explosion. Never listen to what people tell you about old New York, because if you didn't witness it, it is not a part of your New York and might as well be Jersey. Except for that bit about the Dutch buying Manhattan for 24 bucks--there are and always will be braggarts who "got in at the right time."
There are eight million naked cities in this naked city--they dispute and disagree. The New York City you live in is not my New York City; how could it be? This place multiplies when you're not looking. We move over here, we move over there. Over a lifetim
I started building my New York on the uptown No. 1 train. My first city memory is of looking out a subway window as the train erupted from the tunnel on the way to 125th Street and palsied up onto the elevated tracks. It's the early 70's, so everything is filthy. Which means everything is still filthy, because that is my city and I'm sticking to it. I still call it the Pan Am Building, not out of affectation, but because that's what it is. For that new transplant from Des Moines, who is starting her first week of work at a Park Avenue South insurance firm, that titan squatting over Grand Central is the Met Life Building, and for her it always will be. She is wrong, of course--when I look up there, I clearly see the gigantic letters spelling out Pan Am, don't I? And of course I am wrong, in the eyes of the old-timers who maintain the myth that there was a time before Pan Am.
History books and public television documentaries are always trying to tell you all sorts of "facts" about New York. That Canal Street used to be a canal. That Bryant Park used to be a reservoir. It's all hokum. I've been to Canal Street, and the only time I ever saw a river flow through it was during the last water-main explosion. Never listen to what people tell you about old New York, because if you didn't witness it, it is not a part of your New York and might as well be Jersey. Except for that bit about the Dutch buying Manhattan for 24 bucks--there are and always will be braggarts who "got in at the right time."
There are eight million naked cities in this naked city--they dispute and disagree. The New York City you live in is not my New York City; how could it be? This place multiplies when you're not looking. We move over here, we move over there. Over a lifetim
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Autoren-Porträt von Colson Whitehead
COLSON WHITEHEAD is the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad. His other works include The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A National Book Award winner and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Colson Whitehead
- 2004, 176 Seiten, mit Abbildungen, Maße: 13,4 x 20,5 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: VINTAGE
- ISBN-10: 1400031249
- ISBN-13: 9781400031245
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
A tour de force. Luc Sante, The New York Times Book ReviewPitch-perfect. . . . Utterly authentic. . . . The Colossus of New York is quite simply the most delicious 13 bites of the Big Apple I ve taken in ages. The Washington Post
A love letter to New York. . . . Colossus illuminates innumerable little moments that define the city. San Francisco Chronicle
The cheapest, most stylish ticket to the Big Apple between two covers. . . . .It s as if Whitehead s scooped his pen into the collective unconscious of everyone who s ever visited New York. Pittsburg Post-Gazette
A revelatory ode to Gotham. . . . Whitehead s engaged eyes and precise prose show us the small details we overlook and the large ones we fail to absorb. The Miami Herald
Smooth, dazzling, evocative. . . . [Whitehead] writes wonderfully, commanding a lush, poetic, mellifluous prose instrument. The Nation
[Whitehead is] a scientist of metropolitan encounters, he surveys places where the masses collide, knitting together hundreds of observations and calculations that usually remain unspoken. . . . The musical prose thrums with urban momentum. The Village Voice
[Whitehead s] New York, like Walt Whitman s or Thomas Pynchon s or Woody Allen s, is full of incantatory potential. Even the subway, ordinary, noisy, gruddy inevitability, becomes a ferry to the Underworld. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
[A] rhapsodic ode to Gotham. Time Out
Jazzlike. . . . A vivid impressionistic montage of Manhattan. The Seattle Times
Whitehead s series of vignettes and remembrances paint a perfect visual landscape. . . . A heartfelt tribute to Whitehead s home. The Oregonian
Lyrical. . . . Lean and full of longing. . . . The kind of book that will be . . . passed around, dog-eared, library-tagged, resold, from reader to reader. . . . Whitehead takes a known and specific place and universalizes it, insinuating it into the meshwork of our thoughts in a manner impervious to
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time and trend. Minneapolis Star Tribune
Thrums with anxious excitement and excited anxiety accommodating the noirish, the reportorial, and the epigrammatic. . . . The best passages deserve comparison with E.B. White s Here is New York. Entertainment Weekly
Whitehead [is] one of the city s and country s finest young writers. . . . [A] guided tour de force. Chicago Tribune
Jazzlike. . . . A vivid impressionistic montage of Manhattan. The Seattle Times
A revelatory ode to Gotham. . . . Whitehead s engaged eyes and precise prose show us the small details we overlook and the large ones we fail to absorb. Miami Herald
Profound and playful. Los Angeles Times
Whitehead s series of vignettes and remembrances paint a perfect visual landscape. . . . A heartfelt tribute to Whitehead s home. The Oregonian
Rhapsodic love letters . . . elegant, ambitious essays. New York Post
Impressionistic . . . [an] affecting homage to E.B. White. New York Magazine (Top Fall Book Pick)
Thrums with anxious excitement and excited anxiety accommodating the noirish, the reportorial, and the epigrammatic. . . . The best passages deserve comparison with E.B. White s Here is New York. Entertainment Weekly
Whitehead [is] one of the city s and country s finest young writers. . . . [A] guided tour de force. Chicago Tribune
Jazzlike. . . . A vivid impressionistic montage of Manhattan. The Seattle Times
A revelatory ode to Gotham. . . . Whitehead s engaged eyes and precise prose show us the small details we overlook and the large ones we fail to absorb. Miami Herald
Profound and playful. Los Angeles Times
Whitehead s series of vignettes and remembrances paint a perfect visual landscape. . . . A heartfelt tribute to Whitehead s home. The Oregonian
Rhapsodic love letters . . . elegant, ambitious essays. New York Post
Impressionistic . . . [an] affecting homage to E.B. White. New York Magazine (Top Fall Book Pick)
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