Area Code 212 is filled with idiosyncratic delights and oddities of New York's wittiest social chroniclers, Tama Janowitz. Included in this book is her hilarious account of Andy Warhol's eighties blind date club; her brief moment of celebrity as an elderly teenage extra in a ZZ Top video; the day she tested mentally retarded on an IQ test; and many other revealing tales of New York life, including its parties, its restaurants, and its fashion. Janowitz gives us her unique lowdown on her 1990s conversion from Manhattan to Brooklyn, on hairless dogs and ferrets, babies, the outer boroughs, big hair days, and bad hair days.
Area Code 212: New York Days, New York Nights
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
While Janowitz is famous for her 1986 bestseller Slaves of New York, she's published widely since then—in everything from Vogue to Modern Ferret—and has revised many pieces for this anthology. Apart from the first selection, a horrifying description of having a miscarriage in a toilet at the Museum of Modern Art, most are in the E.B. White mode: witty vignettes on life in New York. Since adopting Chinese babies isn't uncommon in the world of modern Manhattanites, it's not surprising when Janowitz describes the trip she and her husband took to Heifei to adopt. Janowitz's description of her incompetence as a new mom has an almost Marx Brothers quality, as she details their baby fighting a diaper change "like a wounded fox in a leg-hold trap." Her essays on animals and pets are characteristically contrarian. She prefers "timid, feeble, neurotic, snappish, picky, babyish" dogs, but finds the Prospect Park Zoo's kangaroo no more interesting than a "gigantic rabbit." Apart from crotchety lapdogs, Janowitz loves food (oozing pizza, pounds of chocolate, doughnuts, steaks, etc.), although she doesn't enjoy elegant hors d'oeuvres at lavish receptions—after all, isn't eating "basically a solitary pleasure"? "The '80s died in Manhattan in 1987, along with Andy Warhol," she writes. But Janowitz herself, older and more self-critical, is still going strong.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Janowitz's caustic wit, her taste for the sordid and the absurd, and her knack for skewering the fashionable and championing the clueless are as vividly present in her pithy nonfiction as they are in her spiky novels, which include A Certain Age (1999) and Peyton Amber (2003). This robust essay collection spans the past two decades and forms a montagelike self-portrait and a sharp critique of urban life. But will the reader get past the jarring opening essay, a deadpan and graphic account of her suffering a miscarriage at the Museum of Modern Art? This rough start does establish Janowitz's sanguinary tendencies, and things get far more engaging once she offers curmudgeonly yet affectionate tales about her adopted Chinese daughter and cops to her penchant for wearing bizarre outfits and her fondness for tiny, high-strung dogs. Janowitz is at her mordant best when she chronicles the spectrum of New York life, from her crummy neighborhood grocery and the fringes of Prospect Park to decadent promotional events and her hilarious escapades with Andy Warhol and their blind date club. Never correct or polite, Janowitz is sharply observant, bracingly frank, wryly skeptical, and fully aware of the deeper issues at stake, from the devaluing of art to homelessness to the precarious state of the environment. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I haven't seen any of Janowitz's writing since Slaves of New York was first in paprback. This is a book I still refer myself back to now and then for some of its best stories ("You and the Boss" and "Kurt and Natasha: A Relationship" come to mind), but this book was followed with the quickly faultering and ultimately bland novel A Cannibal in Manhattan. But the bright spots of Slaves show that there is great promise for Janowitz's work--she does have a sensible way of handling absurdity, and at her best she puts even the most absurd situations in a wonderfully accesible light. This, of course, would seem to be one of the main drives of absurdity--to make even the most fantastic situation sympathetic because it ultimately touches something innately human, something that we could always learn or re-experience.
But when Janowitz goes wrong, the human element goes away, and one is left with a bizarre string of details that do little more than delight in being strange, but with little meaningful appeal. Unfortunately, this may be what Janowitz most enjoys. I saw her read with Howard Mohr, and a good part of her reading involved presenting slides of strange people that she knew in NYC. It was at least a little arrogant, more than a little egocentric, and ultimately carried little interest except for those who already thought that NYC was something of a circus, and here was a ringmaster giving them exactly what they wanted.
This experience was pretty much the same I had when reading this book. In her collection of essays and almost diary-like experiences of NYC, Janowitz presents a host of characters, and mostly herself, but often in such short doses that most of the pieces in here feel like journal entries, but with little attraction beyond the personal or the already-in-the-know. As in the reading, I felt that many of these pieces only held appeal for those already interested or curious about NYC, or maybe those in the NYC clique who can revel in inside jokes or things that remind them of what they already know. Lucky for Janowitz, she has chosen a rather large clique to address, rather than the Rotary Club in Wichita, KS, for example, but too many of these pieces feel horribly underdeveloped and only out to point out oddities in the world, but not out to make them sympathetic. There are some moments of great humor, but they don't sustain, and moreso are defused through extended efforts to make her dogs funny, or her family life.
The biggest disappointment through this was the bravado and arrogance that played subtly throughout this. Granted, Janowitz is rather open about very personal experiences, but it is also laced with an egotism that becomes more apparent in other moments. This is probably when drove my interest out of the book quite quickly.
In all, I found myself lightly curious, but hardly engaged.
But when Janowitz goes wrong, the human element goes away, and one is left with a bizarre string of details that do little more than delight in being strange, but with little meaningful appeal. Unfortunately, this may be what Janowitz most enjoys. I saw her read with Howard Mohr, and a good part of her reading involved presenting slides of strange people that she knew in NYC. It was at least a little arrogant, more than a little egocentric, and ultimately carried little interest except for those who already thought that NYC was something of a circus, and here was a ringmaster giving them exactly what they wanted.
This experience was pretty much the same I had when reading this book. In her collection of essays and almost diary-like experiences of NYC, Janowitz presents a host of characters, and mostly herself, but often in such short doses that most of the pieces in here feel like journal entries, but with little attraction beyond the personal or the already-in-the-know. As in the reading, I felt that many of these pieces only held appeal for those already interested or curious about NYC, or maybe those in the NYC clique who can revel in inside jokes or things that remind them of what they already know. Lucky for Janowitz, she has chosen a rather large clique to address, rather than the Rotary Club in Wichita, KS, for example, but too many of these pieces feel horribly underdeveloped and only out to point out oddities in the world, but not out to make them sympathetic. There are some moments of great humor, but they don't sustain, and moreso are defused through extended efforts to make her dogs funny, or her family life.
The biggest disappointment through this was the bravado and arrogance that played subtly throughout this. Granted, Janowitz is rather open about very personal experiences, but it is also laced with an egotism that becomes more apparent in other moments. This is probably when drove my interest out of the book quite quickly.
In all, I found myself lightly curious, but hardly engaged.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Having slogged through several VERY IMPORTANT and no doubt much book clubbed novels of the sort where a trio of southern ladies is glimpsed baking their baked goods while dancing to the Shirelles, it was like taking off a girdle to read these short pieces. Even when certain key points are repeated, belying a sort of publishing house sloppiness, I didn't mind - I'm all for Tama making a buck without having to rework old material that still rings fresh and funny.
Make that very very very funny - and I was gratified that Brooklyn, despite the title, loomed so large. Dang, I should have moved here in the early 80s!
Make that very very very funny - and I was gratified that Brooklyn, despite the title, loomed so large. Dang, I should have moved here in the early 80s!
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence:
Sometimes, living in New York, I got invited to movie premieres and screenings. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
masala dosa, cookie company Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, New Jersey, Andy Warhol, Upper East Side, United States, Staten Island, World Trade Center, Coney Island, Donut Plant, Edith Wharton, Paige Powell, Upper West Side, Central Park, East Village, Grandma Anne, Krispy Kreme, Lily Bart, Mother's Day, New Year's Eve, Wall Street, Elvis Presley, Keith Haring, Oscar de la Renta, West Indian, All Aries New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Sometimes, living in New York, I got invited to movie premieres and screenings. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
masala dosa, cookie company Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, New Jersey, Andy Warhol, Upper East Side, United States, Staten Island, World Trade Center, Coney Island, Donut Plant, Edith Wharton, Paige Powell, Upper West Side, Central Park, East Village, Grandma Anne, Krispy Kreme, Lily Bart, Mother's Day, New Year's Eve, Wall Street, Elvis Presley, Keith Haring, Oscar de la Renta, West Indian, All Aries New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 20
books:
See all 20 books this book cites
- New York by Tama Janowitz in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Peyton Amberg: A Novel by Tama Janowitz in Front Matter
- Rolling Stones by Rh Value Publishing on page 246
- The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides on page 207
- A Certain Age: A Novel by Tama Janowitz in Front Matter
See all 20 books this book cites
Books on Related Topics
(learn more)
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
