6/2/95 [Paperback]

Donald Breckenridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 2001

Set in New York City on June 2, 1995, this novel explores the dimensions of a single day through the lives of fifteen characters. Fluidly moving between narrative perspectives and story lines, 6/2/95 proposes a new structure and form for the novel at the beginning of the twenty-first century while at the same time presenting an absorbing and humorous tale.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Breckenridge, a playwright, here turns the novel into a dramatic form. Fifteen characters—among them a painter, a Salvadoran immigrant, an alcoholic, a single mother, and an unemployed writer—travel through New York City on a single day in 1995. As they pass each other on the street, speak on the phone, make love, argue, cheat, and stand each other up, their paths intersect or narrowly miss in a finely choreographed Altmanesque dance. Breckenridge's paragraphless, interlocked text is at times brilliant, at times confusing, but always surprising, and his bumbling, struggling New York is one we can all recognize.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

About the Author

Donald Breckenridge is the author of more than a dozen plays as well as the novella Rockaway Wherein (1998, Red Dust). His work has also appeared in the Pierogi Press and the Brooklyn Rail. He lives in Brooklyn, New York

Product Details

• Paperback: 210 pages
• Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil (December 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881471772
• ISBN-13: 978-1881471776
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,624,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Intricate and Impactful, June 15, 2007

By 

easyreeder - See all my reviews

This review is from: 6/2/95 (Paperback)

Breckenridge is a champion of language. The prose is lyrical, precise and full of revelations. A powerful style and a masterwork.

4.0 out of 5 stars An Honest New York Without the Lecture--Murakami meets Denis Johnson, June 12, 2007

By 

Alan B. Cameron "Bart Cameron" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 6/2/95 (Paperback)

I'm one of the millions of Midwesterners who relocated to New York and got sucked up into the charm of just walking around the city, riding the train, trying to soak up the city. Alfred Kazin has the essential book on the experience, Walker in the City, I guess, but I read that and didn't find anything to connect to.

I think maybe if you haven't had those months of obsessing about New York, you won't understand the beauty of what Donald Breckenridge did with this book. There have been great New York novels, definitely, but a lot of the time they get caught up in a kind of lecture or overworked plot. What this does, this book of 15 New Yorkers--a number down and out in ways you don't think about, like a man walking across the Brooklyn Bridge instead of dropping the $2 on train fare-- and some Chinatown turtles, is present moments without judgment, more like a prose poem.

Anyway, I bought this book, read it, read it again, and have spent a long while trying to figure out why it's so effective, and then wishing that more writers would explore this style.

As far as direct comparisons, I'd put it somewhere between the Haruki Murakami collection After the Flood and Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son.

Okay, there's also a disclaimer. I met Mr. Breckenridge. After reading his first book, I sent a story in to the magazine he edits, The Brooklyn Rail.