Walking New York

Walking New York is an idiosyncratic guidebook to New York a study of twelve American writers who walked in New York and wrote about their impressions of the city in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. New York has always been a magnet city for writers. Alfred Kazin says "New York may very well be the [...]
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Walking New York is an idiosyncratic guidebook to New York a study of twelve American writers who walked in New York and wrote about their impressions of the city in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. New York has always been a magnet city for writers. Alfred Kazin says "New York may very well be the biggest subject for American literature in our century." Many authors who lived in New York, however, did not write about it from the perspective of a walker for example, Edith Wharton. The writers the author discusses did what Whitman said he did: "Manhattan's streets I saunter'd pondering." They could be called "restless analysts" to use a phrase that Henry James applied to himself. Their view of the city cannot be summed up in a phrase or two. Though they often disliked what they saw on their walks, they were fascinated by a city William Dean Howells called "splendidly and sordidly commercial." Several writers ruminate on questions that still are debated: the pros and cons of capitalism, the impact of immigration. Many imply that New York is a bewildering text that is hard to make sense of.Returning to New York after an absence of two decades, James was "agreeably baffled" by the city. James loathed many things about "bristling" New York, but he found the city far more interesting than Boston or Philadelphia. The author reflects on Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, William Dean Howells, Jacob Riis, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, James Weldon Johnson, Alfred Kazin, Elizabeth Hardwick, Colson Whitehead, and Teju Cole. In "The Daydreamers," Robert Pinsky says, "All day all over the city every person/Wanders a different city..." Each writer in Walking New York wanders a different city.