The Night Line [Hardcover]

Ambrose Clancy (Author), Peter Donahoe (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1990

The shape-up at the taxi garage in mid-afternoon: you get a cab two, three, or four hours after you've clocked in and given your hack license to the dispatcher–perhaps five or six if it is summer and college kids are working along with professionals. All those hours you could be on the street earning your living, or being mugged. When you get a cab it needs cleaning, but you don't do the needful at the garage. You have to show mileage, so you drive off some place where you can park. And from then on it's a scramble to deal with the geography and the traffic. Part of that is virtuosity, exploit, and exhilaration; the other part is nerves, rage, and killing fatigue. Day after day. If you're healthy and you're lucky. Ambrose Clancy, who wrote the text of The Night Line, is a novelist and was a professional taxi driver. Peter M. Donahoe, who took the pictures that appear in the book–of which twenty-five have been chosen for permanent exhibition of the Museum of the City of New York–was also a professional driver, working out of the same garage as his fellow author. Mr. Clancy's text tells the story of a single night's work. Like the photographs, it is never pretty, but it is often beautiful as it presents the reality of the working lives of men and women.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Driving the "night line" in a New York City cab is not for the faint of heart. It's a dark and dangerous world, and a tough place to make a buck. This chronicle of one such night, penned by novelist and cabby Clancy, follows him past the weirdos and junkies, pimps and hookers he fears to pick up, and the no less risky fares he actually accepts. Maybe he will be asked to share a joint or a friendly conversation; more likely, intimate human dramas will be played out in the back seat among the nickel tippers and those who vomit on the floor. Clancy does not offer a pretty picture, and neither do Donahoe's harsh black-and-white photos, which comprise the second half of the book. They present the city's often ugly nocturnal face and the unsmiling, careworn taxi drivers who confront it every night--but their snapshot quality lacks the power of Clancy's hardened prose. This is indeed the belly of the beast, as seen by two who braved the nighttime streets.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The text by Ambrose Clancy is both lucid and powerful...the photographs by Peter Donahue capture it all in stark black and white and gray...This is a terrific book. (Tim O'Brien Winner Of The National Book Award )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books; 1St Edition edition (January 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 094153345X
• ISBN-13: 978-0941533454
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,878,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars crummy review comment, June 13, 2007

By 

Ishmael Zarkov "Dr Zarkov" (Starvation Falls NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Night Line (Hardcover)

While the Publisher's review comments about Clancy's writing are indeed accurate and worthy, the reviewer doesn't know diddly about photography. There is nothing 'snapshot' about them; he just doesn't underatand the syntax and methods of 35mm street photography and documentation. Each image is a full-frame uncropped image and carefully composed. They fully embody the 'decisive moment' ethos of Cartier-Bresson and other photojournalists. 25 of the 90 images are in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York.
Photographers should be wary of their work falling into the hands of image ignorant lit-crits.