I have never been to New York but I think it’s safe to assume that the city as portrayed in this lively collection of short stories is very different from when it was first published in 1986.
As Tama Janowitz said in a recent interview, in the 80s it was still possible to buy or rent a relatively cheap terraced house (brownstone) in the centre and communities of struggling artists were commonplace; now these same properties sell for millions and the ragged bohemian culture has been forced out.
Nowadays, she says : “On every block [there] is Starbucks, Banana Republic, The Gap …… it’s changed in such a homogenous, universal way”.
It will also be obvious to any modern reader that the equivalent NYC hipsters would, these days, be jabbering on cellphones or glued to their tablets. A scene in which a woman dare not leave her apartment for fear of missing a call reads as a quaint slice of modern history – is this really how they/we used to live?
But although the setting and details are dated, the ambitions and attitudes of the characters are still recognisable – after all, cities and technology change more rapidly than people do.
Continue reading
Man is born free and everywhere he is drinking coffee in chains like Starbucks and Costa.
