Amazon.com: 6/2/95: Donald Breckenridge: Books

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker
Breckenridge, a playwright, here turns the novel into a dramatic form. Fifteen characters—among them a painter, a Salvadoran immigrant, an alcoholic, a single mother, and an unemployed writer—travel through New York City on a single day in 1995. As they pass each other on the street, speak on the phone, make love, argue, cheat, and stand each other up, their paths intersect or narrowly miss in a finely choreographed Altmanesque dance. Breckenridge's paragraphless, interlocked text is at times brilliant, at times confusing, but always surprising, and his bumbling, struggling New York is one we can all recognize.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Product Description
Set in New York City on June 2, 1995, this novel explores the dimensions of a single day through the lives of fifteen characters. Fluidly moving between narrative perspectives and story lines, 6/2/95 proposes a new structure and form for the novel at the beginning of the twenty-first century while at the same time presenting an absorbing and humorous tale.

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews

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

Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Intricate and Impactful, June 15, 2007

By	easyreeder - See all my reviews

Breckenridge is a champion of language. The prose is lyrical, precise and full of revelations. A powerful style and a masterwork.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

4.0 out of 5 stars An Honest New York Without the Lecture--Murakami meets Denis Johnson, June 12, 2007

By	Alan B. Cameron "Bart of the Foghorns" (Reykjav�k Iceland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm one of the millions of Midwesterners who relocated to New York and got sucked up into the charm of just walking around the city, riding the train, trying to soak up the city. Alfred Kazin has the essential book on the experience, Walker in the City, I guess, but I read that and didn't find anything to connect to.

I think maybe if you haven't had those months of obsessing about New York, you won't understand the beauty of what Donald Breckenridge did with this book. There have been great New York novels, definitely, but a lot of the time they get caught up in a kind of lecture or overworked plot. What this does, this book of 15 New Yorkers--a number down and out in ways you don't think about, like a man walking across the Brooklyn Bridge instead of dropping the $2 on train fare-- and some Chinatown turtles, is present moments without judgment, more like a prose poem.

Anyway, I bought this book, read it, read it again, and have spent a long while trying to figure out why it's so effective, and then wishing that more writers would explore this style.

As far as direct comparisons, I'd put it somewhere between the Haruki Murakami collection After the Flood and Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son.

Okay, there's also a disclaimer. I met Mr. Breckenridge. After reading his first book, I sent a story in to the magazine he edits, The Brooklyn Rail.