Customer Reviews

The Colossus of New York

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I read a great deal of this book in a bookstore this afternoon, knowing good and well that I had no business buying another book - I ended up buying it (half because I was in love with it, half because the author was doing a reading at the same bookstore later in the evening and I wanted a signed copy). Sufficed to say - I went to the reading, finished the book on the train and I am in love with this man's words and have fallen in love with New York AGAIN (both his and mine)

The writing is so beautiful and raw and smart and witty and has the tendency to remind us how wondrous all of the things we overlook as ordinary really are and just how singular NY reallt is. And, of course, god bless the man who can write in tons of tenses and not lose the audience's interest. Whitehead feels to me (having not read his other work) like the rare kind of writer who can write to and for anyone.

Everyone is getting this book for christmas. Everyone. I hope many read it, its give-you-goosebumps lovely.

This short work captures in beautifully evocative language the moods amd nuances of daily life in New York City. It is a book that expresses so accurately the feelings that I personally experience in New York that I wish this is the book I had written. Thankfully Colson Whitehead has put these observations and feelings into words and expressed them for all New Yorkers in spirit to savor and reflect on again and again. A wonderful book for current residents, transplanted natives (like me) and visitors who want to get inside the pulse of the greatest city on the planet.

Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts (Doubleday, 2003)

When one encounters the name "Colson Whitehead," one is apt to think of an old Irish immigrant viewing the city through a jaundiced eye, bleary from another night of stumbling home in rush hour only to find he's locked himself out of his bachelor pad and can't get to the can of beans sitting on the counter seductively calling his name. Instead, what we're given is a young (younger than I am, anyway) born-and-raised New Yorker writing about the place he calls home.

But Colson Whitehead's The Colossus of New York is not just another travelogue. Oh, no, my friends. In fact, it is anything but; I seriously doubt the NY tourism board is going to be recommending this one. At times loving and ominous, sweet and sassy, laugh-out-loud funny and painfully depressed, The Colossus of New York is much like New York itself. There are eight million stories in the naked city, Whitehead wryly quotes, and one would think from reading this that every one of them is feeling a completely different emotion from any of the others at any given moment, and that it's all a constantly swirling chaotic mass. Amen.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book is how Whitehead manages to take this odd, impressionist look at New York and map it onto you, the reader. You're liable to find at least one or two snatches of sentence per page you can identify with, even if you've never set foot within an hundred miles of the place. Thus, even if you care nothing about New York, it's probable he's going to keep you interested in its goings-on. A beautiful thing, that. But the draw of the book, and its continuing majesty throughout, is Whitehead's ability with language. His diction takes us from the language poetry of Charles Olson to the Nuyorican-style street rap that passes for poetry among slammers, but with Whitehead the language never loses its poetic drive. All of it, even the ugliness, is beautiful.

And above all, The Colossus of New York is a love song, the kind that one would write to one's spouse after seventy years of marriage if one could find a way to include all one's spouse's faults and still make it beautiful. This is a powerful little book, and highly deserving of the widest possible audience. A shoo-in for the top ten list this year. **** ½

Colson Whitehead's "The Colossus of New York" is a sort of prose poem to New York. But interestingly enough, the city's identity is almost incidental. New York could be any megalopolis. Whitehead simply uses it as a convenient dumping ground for heaping piles of metaphor, innuendo, and wry pseudo-Freudian slip-riffs. As Whitehead eventually says: "Talking about New York is a way of talking about the world." He even outdoes Iain Sinclair in this territory because, hey, "Colossus" is actually readable.

Whitehead sculpts sentences here with dazzling, fluid mastery. In sentence after sentence, he manages to surprise you, keeping you in gleeful suspense for that next line, and the next one... And yet it never feels overwrought or exhausting, probably because he pays equal attention to the rhythm of his prose (this is one of those books you can't help reading aloud).

Here's one of my many favorite passages, set in the subway system:

"This is the fabled journey through the underground, folks, and it's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. On the opposite track it's a field of greener grass, you gotta beat trains off with a stick. From his secret booth the announcer scares and reassures alternatively. The postures on the platform sag or stiffen appropriately. With a dial controlling the amount of static. What are their rooms like, the men at the microphones. One day the fiscal importunities of the subway announcer's union will be exposed and that will be the end of the hot tubs and lobster, but until then they break out the bubbly. Look down the tunnel one more time and your behavior will describe a psychiatric disorder. It's infectious. They take turns looking down into darkness and the platform is a clock: the more people standing dumb, the more time has passed since the last train. The people fall from above into hourglass dunes. Collect like seconds."

I also recommend the audio book edition of this title, as Whitehead himself reads the thing in a dizzying performance. It's like a long shot of aggression with a beat-poetry rhythm and a helping of faux snottiness, all orchestrated to allow us to experience the idea of street-level New York in a manageable package.

This little sort of tone poem captures some of the beauty and some of the meanness of New York life. I didn't come away from THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK as being negative toward the city, but even if Mr. Whitehead were, we New Yorkers need our cranks and curmudgeons. It makes us part of who we are, after all.

The free style works MOST of the time. When it doesn't, it really doesn't. (It is no coincidence that the most straight-forward section, the introduction, is the most superb!) THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK doesn't have the lyricism of E.B. White's THIS IS NEW YORK, but it doesn't pretend to want to be like it, anyway. Colson Whitehead's piece is more like Whitman's poetry, as he rambled along the old downtown streets and piers, and recorded his scenes and his feelings about them. Yes, this book could have been greater, but it doesn't take away from the power much of it has. So if you're looking for a history of or guidebook to New York City, this is not the book. But if you're looking for the evocative power of New York, written in a personal, lyrical style, you won't find many better than THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK.

...and definitely my favorite book about New York. Although it is non-fiction, "Colossus" is as vibrant and impressionistic as Whitehead's novels.

Whitehead's prose style perfectly captures the buzz and hustle of the city; it's spare, bitter, and funny. The short, even choppy text changes perspective from sentence to sentence: in a chapter on subways, for example, you're in one passenger's head, then another, then another. The effect gives the same sensation as New York itself: a swarm of individuals making up the hive.

Everything Whitehead has to say about his city is apt: New York regulars and occasional visitors will find the shock of recognition on every page. My own favorite, about a subway car full of strangers: "If you don't know what time it is, wait for a peek while he changes his grip." If you have not tried that yourself, you should spend more time in NYC.

Colson Whitehead is a talented writer, as one can easily see in his first two novels. So when I read that he was writing nonfiction about New York, I was thrilled at the prospects. But I don't know what to make of this book.
The majority of the 13 parts have the same structure. Take a place. Write short sentences that explain what you would see at that place. Include actions and thoughts of those characters.
On paper, it sounds awful, and it some ways it is. It is the shortest 176 pages you will ever read, but this style gets highly repetitive. Rather than explaining why he chose these places or what they mean to him, Whitehead includes little about himself. There is quite simply zero insight into the soul of the city.
But the book does have its strong points. Whitehead's scenes are very evocative and I often found myself smiling and nodding at his dead-on descriptions of what I had seen in New York. He notices things about New York that you take for granted. At times, his skills shine through.
But it ultimately felt like reading a good writer's notes before he turns them in to an actual book. I wanted so much more from this book, and based on what is there (and also the wonderful first essay, which is different from all others in structure), I get the feeling it could be there. Everyone has their own version of New York and I'm still waiting to see how Whitehead really sees his hometown. Ultimately it reads like an astute but repetitive poem. Nonetheless, any book that makes me nostalgic about my trips to Port Authority has done one incredible job.

This book was in the front of every book store this Christmas, with a lot of praise saying that it "captured the soul of New York". In my opinion, it only captures the cliche of New York. Whitehead does not hesitate to lash out at hipsters and yuppies, those unlucky enough to live in Brooklyn (as he does) and any other fool that tries to enjoy a life here--but enjoyment seems beyond his capability. Even a trip to Central Park is something to be endured because his sterotypical neurotic, sarcastic and hyper-critical "New Yorker" alter-egos can't really appreciate the beauty and grace of the city at all. In this book NY only appears and a place that will falsely dazzle you, beat you up and spit you out. Although the first essay is brilliant (the only one that seems to have been edited at all-probably because it previously appeared in the NY Times Magazine) and the moods evoked by the others are quite clear, I was disappointed that the only mood I ended up feeling was disgust. I'm sorry that for Whitehead and those like him that this city is just a town of pretenders, false lives and dashed hopes. It's home to me-more than one long whine.

Colson Whitehead's The Colossus of New York is unlike any travel book I have previously read. Instead of the dull, monotonous reviews of a guidebook, Whitehead presents an insiders take of one of the most complex cities in the world. While traditional guides can be useful, Colossus of New York presents a true New York experience, from transportation difficulties to the affect of weather on the population. By jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint, much like Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Whitehead frames New York from many different perspectives. This writing style creates a more wholesome picture of the city, and is much more enjoyable for the reader. With all the different perspectives comes many humorous takes on human actions, such as kids "detonating puddles" in the streets. This book is very entertaining, and is well worth a read.

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I had a similar reaction to the reader from NYC-- I was killing time in a bookstore, knowing full well I didn't need to buy another book, started reading this and ended up buying it. Having only recently visited NYC for the first time, I was looking for a book that captured the feeling the city gave me, the sense of connectedness just being on the street provided. This book does that, highlighting the little things that make the city wonderful. It reminds me of the wonder of NYC more than any photograph I took (and I'm a photographer!). Recommended.