Sleeping with the Mayor: A True Story [Hardcover]

John Jiler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

Sleeping with the Mayor is a riveting tale of power and powerlessness, race, class and individual personalities presented as vividly as in a novel. In the shadow of City Hall, but with no one to guide them, the members of the homeless community must decide how to organize themselves, how to structure their meetings, and what rules the "residents" of their community must live by. The cast of characters includes Mayor Ed Koch himself, a politician's politician facing his Waterloo.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

New York City, summer 1988: a small group protesting homelessness holds an all-night vigil in City Hall Park across from the offices of then-mayor Ed Koch. From this one-night protest Kochville rises, becoming a fixture in the park until winter. An author (Dark Wind: A True Account of Hurricane Gloria's Assault on Fire Island, LJ 6/15/93), journalist, and playwright, Jiler recounts the daily life and struggles of the homeless citizens of Kochville during that period, set against a backdrop of city budget debates and Koch's reelection battle with David Dinkins. For a true story, the book reads too much like a novel. Apart from mentioning it in the preface, one can't tell that Jiler actually lived with the Kochvillians during this time or determine whether attributed thoughts and feelings are as reported or simply surmised. Thus, while the book makes interesting reading, it ultimately disappoints as a factual account.?Kate Kelly, Treadwell Lib., Massachusetts General Hosp., Boston
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A drama in three parts, focusing on the conflict between New York's mayor Ed Koch and the homeless in the late 1980s. In June 1988, 30 homeless men and women decided to stay in City Hall Park after the organizers of an all-night vigil on their behalf had gone back to their homes and offices. Initially, they stayed because the weather was good and they had no place else to go. But over time, they got organized. By fall, the residents of ``Kochville'' had become a political force, a darling of the media, and a major irritant to irascible Mayor Koch. Jiler (Dark Wind, 1993) wrote about Kochville for the Village Voice, eventually becoming so engrossed in his story that, like an anthropologist, he moved in with the homeless in the park. This time around, Jiler puts Kochville into context, describing its rise and fall alongside that of Mayor Koch and of 850 Longwood Avenue, a Bronx apartment building symbolic of disastrous, heartless housing policies and trends that made homelessness nearly epidemic in New York City in the 1980s. Koch was the villain of the story in 1988, but Jiler now shows him as a complex man of both great strengths and self-destructive flaws, much like Kochville's home-grown leaders, Duke York and Larry Locke. An anthropologist would have told us how his own presence in the camp affected events and how he became privy to the private conversations and inner wrestlings that fill much of this book. But Jiler is a journalist and playwright, and his apparent intent is not just to chronicle a specific event but to construct a drama with universal lessons about characters who must war against both social forces and inner demons. A long-shot, winning trifecta for Jiler, who makes the reader care about each of his three protagonists: Ed Koch, the homeless, and 850 Longwood Avenue. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 361 pages
• Publisher: Ruminator Books; First Edition edition (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886913145
• ISBN-13: 978-1886913141
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,886,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jiler writes like Tom Wolfe, my highest compliment., December 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping with the Mayor: A True Story (Hardcover)

This is the new Tom Wolfe novel I've been waiting for since "Bonfire of the Vanities," even though it's not a novel and Tom Wolfe didn't write it. This vivid recounting of battles waged by a group of New York's homeless is a hilarious page-turner, not what you would expect. Author John Jiler, a freelance writer for the Village Voice, writes first-hand about events he lived, and fills the book with deeply known, extraordinary characters, in Quixotic combat with New York Mayor Ed Koch. The unwelcome residents of "Kochville," a park across the street from City Hall, come together for an overnight vigil in pouring rain, and stay together week after week to create a community for themselves and each other which none of them even dreamed possible.
Great reading!