4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Manhattan, surrealism is invisible, March 10, 1999
This review is from: New York Literary Lights: William Corbett (Paperback)
I remember the first time I saw New York. I was with my parents and we drove down through Pennsylvania from Canada, over the Susquehanna and into New Jersey. As we came around the turnpike, I recognized a city scape rising up over my left shoulder. Through the dusty car window and the haze, perspective was compressed and the distant city looked like jutting grey teeth. Emotionally I realized it was THE CITY, before I could make sense of the angle. It didn't fit with all the t.v. vistas and documentary pictures I had been raised on. It was unique, and it was fresh and it was my discovery.
As years go by and a once distant and monumental city becomes rationalized by repetitive experience, it is easy to lose the first sense of discovery, that dreamy feeling of seeing a great city for the first time.
"New York: Literary Lights" restores that magical quality. The book is an alphabetical listing of most of the great writers, publishers and writing haunts and events that have shaped the modern american mythos. More than just a back to back of mini-biographies, it is a secret map of the vital human side of New York. Streets that had begun to fade jumped back to life for me when I read that one of my favourite writers lived or worked there. The biographies are primarily about writers, but weave a rich fabric that depicts the literary history of New York. As I read deep into the book I found myself flipping back and forth, trying to pick up the trail of a place, or an event and its recurrant impact on New York literature. The writing is deft and chatty, the kind of writing that satisfies like gossip, but stays in mind much longer.
Although some of the stories and characters are legendary and quintessentially Gotham, like, say, Hart Crane, Norman Mailer, or the bar where Dylan Thomas took his last twelve drinks, the bulk of the book is deeper and more penetrating. There are several excellent entries on the Harlem scene, as well as the Jewish scene before and after the second world war. And I learned much about the generous nature of Nathaniel West. The merit of the book however, is Corbett's ability to go beyond the merely encycopedic- to bring out aspects or facts about a writer's life that I did not know. I learned more about people I thought I knew such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edgar Allan Poe.
Although I did not expect such devices, there is an excellent sectional map of Manhattan and Brooklyn which details the districts in which famous writers worked. As well, there is a nice glossary of quotes about New York, containing both the old familiar ones such as Hemingway's "Literary New York is a bottle of tapeworms trying to feed on each other" to Rem Koohaus' "In Manhattan, surrealism is invisible".
I managed to read this book before my last trip to New York. I regret this action, because if I had saved it, I could have extended the inevitable imaginal travel that takes place only when you have physically left a place behind.
I recommend this book highly, both as city guide of sorts and as a great armchair trip.
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