Customer Reviews

Slaves of New York

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has had some trenmendous impacts on me that I never realized until one day when I thought of leg-waxing, I thought of "a tiny women yelling at me in Spanish and pouring hot wax on my legs..." Spend a day in uptown Manhattan with idiosyncratic artists in their most primitive desires and philosophies. This book is unbelievably true and sensitive.

Maybe it's because I was born in the 80's and not partying then, or maybe I'm just too middle-class, but I thought this entire book was pretty mediocre. The characters were interesting, but usually I felt like the author was trying too hard to make them interesting. Janowitz fits in with the Bret Easton Ellis/Jay McInerney style of writing about what it's like to be incredibly spoiled and have no soul. The two aforementioned authors pull that off with a lot more style and ability than she does.

I only read this book because I heard that the character of Stash is in Ellis' book American Psycho. Overall, I found myself interested in the stories and the characters, but most of the stories lacked a certain human aspect that the other two authors know how to provide. This is a good read if you're stuck in an airport all day with nothing else, otherwise I'd recommend getting something with more substance.

I've read this book so many times over that I've actually become sentimentally attached to it. Most of the enjoyment from it is reliving the time in which it's set, the 1980s, an interesting time in the way that the clothing was: at times conservative, other times colorful, overall intriguing, but there's still no way in hell you'd want to BE in it again.

This book captures the lives of the wacky, egocentric NY artists who reflect their hated yuppie counterparts in that they're upwardly mobile, albeit nonconformistly, greedy and self-centered. But unlike yuppies, the artists of the Lower East Side present far more colorful stories and egos to capitalize on.

Fortunately the book has Eleanor, the self-deprecating protagonist to whom we all endear. She keeps the book light-hearted and comical, as she is the offbeat among the offbeat, the miscast in the world of misfits. She is the self-conscious woman who clashes with, and makes uncomfortable, her fellow carefree artists. But she eventually finds her ground in the big city. We root for because she conquers the city the way we wish we could: by keeping intact our integrity, humility, and naivete, and not succumbing to the cynicism and selfishness of the "Me" generation.

I enjoyed this book, and its own flawed view of the perceived nobility of the starving artist. It sort of romanticized the idea of living in Manhattan for me. I read this book while living in Miami, and I now live in Queens. So, I dare say, this book did have an impact on me. I recommend it for its "look back" at the pre-Dot.com mania now possessing New York. Is it foreboding that those with artistic ambitions are still trying to figure out how to pay the rent fifteen years after this book was written?

I read this book in the late 80's, I was around 19. It was given to me as a gift from a man I was dating. It is a humorous look at dating, co-habitation, financial trouble, etc. The movie was good, but didn't capture the "grit" of the story. I highly recommend it, it's fun and I'm going to read it again- 20+ years later.

I read this book when it first came out. I was living and working in NYC, and thought it captured the tone of the city perfectly. Ms. Janawitz got alot of exposure, and seemed like the hot ticket at the time as a new writer. I read some of the reviews above, and I guess you had to be there to appreciate the book. It was right on at the time. NYC in 1985 or '86. I have to re-read it and see if my opinion differs from when I was 18, now that I am 44. Of course, when I was that age, I saw "The Breakfast Club" and it really seemed to talk to my generation. I recently saw it on cable, and now I think it is about stupid, whiney teenagers. Maybe I shouldn't re-read the book, I might be disappointed.

The book is semi-interesting. I must confess i had seen the movie before i bought it, and loved its quirky way, and characters, so i had ALOT of pre-conceived ideas about the book. Some of the book, so far, is vaguely like the movie, but like most movies i see, and then read the book, or visa versa, i usually like one or the other better. In this case the movie wins. The book seems to float from one character or another way to much for me or to really hold my attention. I guess if i judged the book solely on how quickly it put me to sleep, and there for how long it takes me to get through, well then this one is EXCELLENT!( cuz im still trying to finish siiiiiiiiigh) I will still love the book simply because it was written, and then made into a movie i loved, which made me fall in love with a dream of a New York that may have never existed or is long gone, either way it still holds a good place in my life.

The stories in this book describe an ecosystem existing around artists in New York during the early 80s. A sort of stability has been reached among self-centered artists, hungry art dealers, rich and eccentric collectors and hip, desperate young people who live around these artists. The arrogant and delusional art world characters are often pretty funny. The voices and perspectives of all of the characters are the most consistently enjoyable part of the book.

Some criticize that the characters in "Slaves of New York" are shallow. I found that Eleanor's struggles were very compelling, though. Eleanor's story plays out across several of the short prose pieces and has a more subtle arc than the accounts of sillier, louder personalities in the book. Anyway, I found that these shallow people provided a lot of enjoyment as well.

Peppered throughout this collection there are short prose pieces that don't directly fit in their tone or subject matter, but I liked these as well. Some were just fun. A few of these served as guides to reenforce ideas on how the people in this book think. The fates of the people in these ancillary stories also seem to suggest where some of the reoccurring characters are headed. I liked this too. It was like a suggested epilogue.

This book wasn't perfect, but was fun to read and went quickly. As exaggerated and cartoonish as some of the personalities came across, I was often surprised by how accurate the observations about life and relationships felt. I think that the responses to inequality felt especially true. Marley, a painter unable to fund his ambitious project, retreats into delusions of grandeur. The Women's Studies scholar in "engagements" changes direction and keeps looking for exciting new territory when she finds that bland squares have killed the charm where she had hoped to explore life.

I guess that the bad behavior and challenges found in an industry based on entertainment felt familiar and maybe light at times, but I enjoyed this book.

This book is a gas! It consists of little vignettes about a cast of bizarre and shallow artsy characters in New York. The book is utterly entertaining and affirming of the trendy bizarreness of the art world freakos. It had me laughing out loud several times.

Marley Mantello and his brother Achilles are a scream, along with his mom who is so fat that it takes all her energy just to rest. She has so much fat on her body that she appears to have no bones on her feet, "her little figgys". She tells Marley she thinks she's pregnant from having sex twice with a professor of the politics of television. Marley plans to name the baby Achilles and raise it as his own.

The book is well-written and descriptive of the egotistic, narcissistic and shallow self-centeredness of minor artistes.

This was the first book I read by Ms. Janowitz and the story, for the most part, moves along at a nice pace. There are the various assortment of characters...some making numerous appearances, some only a solo appearance. I did appreciate her witty sense of humour.