![]() ![]() They all got on, sitting in the lighted car which was far from empty, which would be choked with people before they got very far uptown, and stood or sat in the isolation cell into which they transformed every inch of space they held.” The New York that Baldwin gives us, wrapped in racial and erotic conflict, is kinetic, nonstop, isolating, gorgeous and, finally, cruel. “Another Country” by James Baldwin, 1962: Early in the novel, Rufus Scott asks Leona, whom he’s just met, “This your first time in New York?” Perhaps it’s not our first time here, but Baldwin’s writing makes the experience of the city immediate and new: “The train came in, filling the great scar of the tracks. Bartleby’s subtitle is “A Story of Wall Street.” There are many wonderful books about Gotham, from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958) by Truman Capote to “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1987) to the stories of John O’Hara but, to me, Gatsby and Bartleby lie beneath them all. “Gatsby” is set on Long Island, but the characters go into the city frequently and, each time they do, Fitzgerald captures something more about its magic. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” (1925) (uptown) and Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) (downtown). The two books I most often think of when I walk around Manhattan are F. “Nevada” fell out of print for a few years, but this month, a new edition was issued by MCD x FSG. That is, Binnie made much of the writing that came after her possible. And with this novel, Imogen Binnie did for a certain late aughts Brooklyn-based trans writing scene what Langston Hughes did for writers during the Harlem Renaissance, or what Gertrude Stein did for the writers of 1920s Paris. ![]() “Nevada” by Imogen Binnie, 2013: It’s called “Nevada,” but it’s set in New York City. It felt very on the nose in terms of what was happening in New York City - at times almost too much - but Ling Ma conveys what it means to continue on in the face of apocalyptic loss so beautifully that I found “Severance” profoundly comforting, too. I read “ Severance” (2018) by Ling Ma in the early months of the pandemic, back when simply going outside for a walk was a calculated risk. ![]() What I love most, though, is what this novel has to say about the lengths an artist might go to in order to make it in New York City. “Rosemary’s Baby” (1967) by Ira Levin has all of my favorite things in a horror read: spooky ambience, weirdly intrusive neighbors, relationship drama and a whole lot of gaslighting. As an adult, I am often drawn to bittersweet New York stories, novels where a person burns out on the city - where, to borrow Joan Didion’s words, a person learns that “it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the Fair.” Two favorites: Richard Yates’s quiet feminist masterpiece, “The Easter Parade ” (1976), a tale of two sisters, one who marries an abuser, the other who clings to her lonely freedom - and Patricia Highsmith’s “The Price of Salt” (1952), about a young Manhattan salesclerk who becomes infatuated with an older married woman … New York City is the perfect backdrop for that turning point when one’s choices suddenly, brutally, matter. Danzy SennaĪs a kid, I loved gritty coming-of-age stories set in New York, like Paule Marshall’s “Brown Girl, Brownstones ” (1959), Henry Roth’s “Call It Sleep” (1934) and Alice Childress’s “A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich ” (1973). “Look At Me” by Jennifer Egan, 2001: Half of this novel takes place in Illinois, but the chapters that unravel in a pre-9/11 Manhattan obsessed with celebrity, internet entrepreneurs and the fashion world are the key fictional record of that moment - seen through the eyes of a famous model whose face is disfigured in a car accident after plastic surgery, no one recognizes her.
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