In the City: Random Acts of Awareness [Hardcover]

Colette Brooks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002

"Brooks' carefully etched and wistful prose echoes that of such master necromancers of the city as Borges, Calvino, or Auster."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The city always been burdened, even haunted, by its history. The city has never been new." Tell that to Peter Stuyvesant or the formerly Manhattan-based Algonquin Indians, one is tempted to reply to Brooks, a professor of writing at New York's New School University. In this set of free associations on New York City and its environs, Brooks's tone is pitch-perfect NPR-style meditation, all hushed tones juxtaposed with wry commentary and commonsense insights: "Losing her life, I imagine," Brooks notes of a woman killed by an ice cart in 1851, "was the last thing on the woman's mind as she awoke on that mid-nineteenth century morning. She might have felt even worse had she known that news of her misfortune would be proclaimed in such a public fashion" by the newspaper. This slim book is packed with similar speculations from an omniscient perspective that flattens out almost everything with which it comes into contact: the Weathermen-blasted brownstone in the Village, delays on the subway, a July 4th fireworks celebration, an arsonist caught setting fires in his own neighborhood ("maybe he was tiring of all the travel"), summer heat. Since Brooks, who won a PEN/Jerard Fund award, never quite conveys what made a given item interesting to her, the "acts" of this book fail to gather force.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Writers have always been intrigued by the contradictory ambience of cities, the mix of what seems permanent and reliable (sidewalks, buildings, familiar faces) and the mutable and frightening (disappearances, accidents, crime, strangers). In her first book, award-winning essayist Brooks stands at the intersection of consistency and chaos in a silken meditation on a city she doesn't name but that is recognizable as New York and attempts to distill the urban experience down to its essence by committing "random acts of awareness" that yield bits of overheard conversation, cryptic headlines, tales of sudden death, odd (or are they ordinary?) moments of grace on subways, and all manner of haunting vignettes in which the unlikely becomes the inevitable. Brooks' carefully etched and wistful prose echoes that of such master necromancers of the city as Borges, Calvino, or Auster, but because this isn't fiction, and because Brooks has a wry tabloid sensibility, her performance also achieves the clever connectivity of a highly rarefied stand-up routine meant not to amuse but to arouse wonder. Which it does, especially in Brooks' attunement to time's baffling elasticity. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 109 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1 edition (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393051080
• ISBN-13: 978-0393051087
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,460,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This changes everything., May 17, 2002

By 

whittlz - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the City: Random Acts of Awareness (Hardcover)

Colette Brooks blew my mind with this book. Everyone these days is so caught up in classifying literature, of putting people in their little boxes, of being able to say "It's like Gatsby meets Eggers on a road trip with Kerouac!" and then along comes Colette and proves that it IS possible to completely reinvent the form... or to invent A form. IN THE CITY is part short story collection, part prose poem, part historical novel, part autobiography. The text itself evades specifics-- every time you think you've got her pinned, know exactly what news item or neighborhood she's talking about, she spirits it away again and takes you someplace new. People talk about reading until they get to "a good stopping point". IN THE CITY has no good stopping point. You jump into the river of Brooks's prose and you're carried to the end, released back into the ocean of your life-- no matter where you live-- looking at it a little differently, a little more closely, and with a lot more affection for the lives around you.

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic!, May 27, 2002

By 

Helen R. Cook (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the City: Random Acts of Awareness (Hardcover)

Colette Brooks has joined the ranks of writers like E.B. White and Jane Jacobs with her beautiful new book, IN THE CITY. Brooks' subtly poetic prose, gentle humor, and eye for the telling detail open the city to the reader, revealing its soul. Anyone who has ever lived in, or dreamed of living in, a city will find this book resonating with echoes of their own feelings and dreams. It is impossible to put it down and impossible to leave it behind. One returns to the book again and again relishing special moments, phrases and insights. Ms. Brooks writes beautifully, sparely and with a unique voice.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A world so familiar and yet like no other, July 30, 2002

By 

Michael Feldman (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the City: Random Acts of Awareness (Hardcover)

In The City is a fantastic read. I never wanted to put it down and the few times when I did, the book immediately beckoned me back. Brooks' visions and ponderings are haunting and thought-provoking. With a language and structure that is incredibly unique and exquisitely poetic, she pulls the reader into the heart and soul of the city- a world so familiar and yet like no other. Any reader will quickly see that this is one of those ever so rare times when a writer will bring a brand new perspective to the world, and let us all look at the same old city for the very first time.