Customer Reviews

New York in the 50s

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved this book! Then again I loved "Wonderful Town," and "Manhattan." I was born in New York, and remember sneaking away to take the subway from the Bronx at age 8 in 1950 to catch glimpses of the glittery awesomeness of Manhattan. Leaving New York in 1954, I returned as an adult much later and made friends who had been part of the dizzying scene of the fifties ...intellectuals, bohemians. Reading this book so vividly recreates an era that, as the cliche says, will be no more. Perched between the Gotham of the 1930's, the art deco towers, the Met, the Frick, and the Space Age of the 1960's there was a post-war mecca for the arts and letters. New York was the center of it all. I have no idea how this book will be perceived by those who have not experienced this period, at least in some way. Perhaps that is the story of some of the reviewers who didn't like it. But for me, the book is like candy.

I found this book inspiring, funny, and beautifully written. It carried me to a time, before cell phones, the internet, dvds and instant communications, when the written word mattered, when books and magazines and letters were greeted with high anticipation and made a difference in people's lives. When books mattered, ideas mattered, friendships were the stuff of life, and art was not only a creative expression but an affirmation, a challenge to take the high road, to live life to the fullest. This book will put zest in your soul. I recommend it highly.

Although I was too young to experience New York In The 50s from a first-hand account, this book made me feel as if I was actually there. I applaud Wakefield for writing one of the best memoirs that I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Evocative portrait of Manhattan by a novelist from Indiana who was enthralled by big city life when the Beats were roaming the Village and booze was the drug of choice. Wakefield smartly divides his book into chapters on subjects like jazz, analysis and his ever-present literary ambitions. The nostalgia makes one yearn for the NYC recreated here when living there was affordable for almost anyone.

Although younger than Wakefield, I was around NYC, especially the Village, in the '50s & I was really looking forward to "looking back" at a unique time & place. This book was a real disappointment, unfortunately, with little more to offer than big (& not so big) names & parties. I found it very superficial & self-promoting, in effect light weight *gossip*, which in the end is very shrewd on the part of author & publisher, but oh so cynical.

I thought the Fifties were a dull, dead backwater until I read this marvelous book. Wakefield's writing is so vivid, visceral and impassioned that you feel what it was like to be suddenly set loose in a place of magic and endless possibility. I particularly loved his account of sexuality and psychoanalysis, of the dance between male and female in those hours just before the revolution. This book made me wish I'd been in New York at that time, but reading about it from Wakefield is the next best thing.

Wakefield reports that, in the 1950s, he bought in to the lifestyle of Greenwich Village--he was committed to it. During the day, he and his fellow writers wrote for magazines (Dissent, Commentary, The Atlantic Monthly, Nation and Village Voice) that espoused a leftist ideology. At night, the conversations in the Manhattan bars reflected their commitment to this ideology.

Wakefield outlined how three different parts of the Village community--writers, artist, and jazz musicians--connected with each other in select bars in the community. Complementing and enriching this network were the political writers of a radical bent such as Michael Harington and James Agee. Both of these men were regulars at the bars frequented by Wakefield, Norman Mailer and others. This interconnected network was also strengthened by the fact that the literary writers as well political writers published articles in the same Manhattan journals.

This was a great book, and I really felt like I was in a time machine following Dan Wakefield's evocative and informing chronicling of his days in New York City during the '50s. With grace and ease, I thoroughly enjoyed reading what I considered living history about living and struggling to be a writer in a special time and period. The fact that so many historic figures crossed Wakefield's path was an extra bonus.

There's a time-honored prerequisite for living the if-I-can-make-it-there life in NYC -- you, and your friends, and the 'hood/bars/restaurant/flats/local characters, etc. assume, by default, all the criteria for being a legitimate 'Scene' or 'Movement' save one: Time. But that one you can ignore because one of your mind's eyes has alreayd projected itself far into the future, so that it can look back and watch you watching yourself and your chums making glorious History!...

That said, I found the title of this book misleading... Wakefield has written an eminently personal memoir, not a history. The telling plods on and on in his cranky, cracked little voice, fusty-bachelor-to-the-core, praising the bygone zany antics of Westvillagers yet falling back (with a literary blush, no less) so repetitively on an unnecessary "but we were from the 50s, we didn't do that" mantra each time his narrative requires the mention of some "beatnik" act -- "free" love, pot, psilocybin, etc. -- so unsure of himself, so inextricably mired in that same narrow, embarrased, small-town midwestern ethos he spends most of the book trying to convince us he had escaped from in the headily free atmosphere of the Village, that he comes across like a stuttering prude. I was ultimately left unconvinced. Wakefield never quite seemed sure of what he wanted to say -- especially in the case of a character like Kerouac. He hems and haws and sidesteps the issue.

It's nice to read about those people, his friends, sure, but in the end, none of them came across as nearly as interesting as others (and other memoirs) from/of the same era. Another old fart jumping on the memoir bandwagon -- another memoir of 50s New York -- truly as innovative, as challenging and as necessary as another Rolling Stones album and/or tour. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz