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Chargement... New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Timepar Craig Taylor
   Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  porte01 | Apr 30, 2021 | 
This is Taylor’s second anthology of urban voices. It follows more or less exactly in the footsteps of Londoners (2011) which was widely and warmly praised. Here he interviews people from all over the city and from every point on the spectrum: banker and bum, window-washer and posh interior designer, subway conductor and private tutor, personal injury lawyer and lice consultant, painter and private cook, landlord and elevator repairman, cabbie and radio presenter, dancer and dentist, student and retiree. A few of the more eccentric individuals defy classification: one is a ‘healer’, another a ‘recycler’. Some are thrillingly articulate, others borderline incomprehensible. Almost all are weirdly compelling and weirdly compelled, as though each had a touch of the Ancient Mariner. Prix et récompenses
A symphony of contemporary New York through the magnificent words of its people--from the best-selling author of Londoners. In the first twenty years of the twenty-first century, New York City has been convulsed by terrorist attack, blackout, hurricane, recession, social injustice, and pandemic. New Yorkers weaves the voices of some of the city's best talkers into an indelible portrait of New York in our time--and a powerful hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people. Best-selling author Craig Taylor has been hailed as "a peerless journalist and a beautiful craftsman" (David Rakoff), acclaimed for the way he "fuses the mundane truth of conversation with the higher truth of art" (Michel Faber). In the wake of his celebrated book Londoners, Taylor moved to New York and spent years meeting regularly with hundreds of New Yorkers as diverse as the city itself. New Yorkers features 75 of the most remarkable of them, their fascinating true tales arranged in thematic sections that follow Taylor's growing engagement with the city. Here are the uncelebrated people who propel New York each day--bodega cashier, hospital nurse, elevator repairman, emergency dispatcher. Here are those who wire the lights at the top of the Empire State Building, clean the windows of Rockefeller Center, and keep the subway running. Here are people whose experiences reflect the city's fractured realities: the mother of a Latino teenager jailed at Rikers, a BLM activist in the wake of police shootings. And here are those who capture the ineffable feeling of New York, such as a balloon handler in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or a security guard at the Statue of Liberty. Vibrant and bursting with life, New Yorkers explores the nonstop hustle to make it; the pressures on new immigrants, people of color, and the poor; the constant battle between loving the city and wanting to leave it; and the question of who gets to be considered a "New Yorker." It captures the strength of an irrepressible city that--no matter what it goes through--dares call itself the greatest in the world. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)974.7History and Geography North America Northeastern U.S. New YorkClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (4.17)
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Some of the characters we meet include a security guard at the Statue of Liberty, a city roadworks engineer trying to hold back the tide on crumbling streets and Infrastructure, and a COVID patient admitted to a NY hospital in the height of the earliest pandemic days.
We meet some of the homeless, the poverty-stricken, a criminal, a lawyer, the militant, a cop, a 911 dispatcher and several social justice seekers; as well as nannies, tutors, interior designers and others trying to eke out a living at the hands of a city which has evolved into a “playground for the rich”, or as some see it, the “violently or aggressively wealthy”.
Several of the stories involve young people arriving from midwestern or southern states, - artists, actors, journalists, singers - creative hopefuls caught up in the dream, the “generosity of opportunities”, the theatrical loudness and the “great bigness” of everything NY.
Across it all, the voices we hear are alternately strident, empathetic, assertive, intelligent, kind, angry, reflective, uncompromising and many are fiercely proud of their borough and their city - in short, every and all characteristics you would expect to find in the population of any huge metropolitan area. What makes this collection cohesive then, is not what these individuals have in common, so much as what they don’t.
If it wasn’t clear beforehand, its certainly clear after losing yourself to this totally engrossing collection of characters - New York City, as evidenced in this book, pulsates with an inexhaustible, fluid, larger-than-life energy which feeds on diversity - the outcome evident in an ever-widening cacophony of city living, an “assault on the senses”, that, love it or hate it, is impossible for an individual to ignore.
A big thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance review copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts presented are my own. (