The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books of 2003
Review: ...and definitely my favorite book about New York. Although it is non-fiction, "Colossus" is as vibrant and impressionistic as Whitehead's novels.

Whitehead's prose style perfectly captures the buzz and hustle of the city; it's spare, bitter, and funny. The short, even choppy text changes perspective from sentence to sentence: in a chapter on subways, for example, you're in one passenger's head, then another, then another. The effect gives the same sensation as New York itself: a swarm of individuals making up the hive.

Everything Whitehead has to say about his city is apt: New York regulars and occasional visitors will find the shock of recognition on every page. My own favorite, about a subway car full of strangers: "If you don't know what time it is, wait for a peek while he changes his grip." If you have not tried that yourself, you should spend more time in NYC.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic.
Review: Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts (Doubleday, 2003)

When one encounters the name "Colson Whitehead," one is apt to think of an old Irish immigrant viewing the city through a jaundiced eye, bleary from another night of stumbling home in rush hour only to find he's locked himself out of his bachelor pad and can't get to the can of beans sitting on the counter seductively calling his name. Instead, what we're given is a young (younger than I am, anyway) born-and-raised New Yorker writing about the place he calls home.

But Colson Whitehead's The Colossus of New York is not just another travelogue. Oh, no, my friends. In fact, it is anything but; I seriously doubt the NY tourism board is going to be recommending this one. At times loving and ominous, sweet and sassy, laugh-out-loud funny and painfully depressed, The Colossus of New York is much like New York itself. There are eight million stories in the naked city, Whitehead wryly quotes, and one would think from reading this that every one of them is feeling a completely different emotion from any of the others at any given moment, and that it's all a constantly swirling chaotic mass. Amen.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book is how Whitehead manages to take this odd, impressionist look at New York and map it onto you, the reader. You're liable to find at least one or two snatches of sentence per page you can identify with, even if you've never set foot within an hundred miles of the place. Thus, even if you care nothing about New York, it's probable he's going to keep you interested in its goings-on. A beautiful thing, that. But the draw of the book, and its continuing majesty throughout, is Whitehead's ability with language. His diction takes us from the language poetry of Charles Olson to the Nuyorican-style street rap that passes for poetry among slammers, but with Whitehead the language never loses its poetic drive. All of it, even the ugliness, is beautiful.

And above all, The Colossus of New York is a love song, the kind that one would write to one's spouse after seventy years of marriage if one could find a way to include all one's spouse's faults and still make it beautiful. This is a powerful little book, and highly deserving of the widest possible audience. A shoo-in for the top ten list this year. **** ½

Rating:
Summary: An Ode to the City
Review: For anyone who has ever loved or hated (or, as is usually the case, both loved and hated) New York City. Whitehead brings a freshness of style to the genre of the essay, in the same way that Tom Wolfe did 30 years ago (although their writing styles are quite dissimilar).

The Colossus of New York is a love poem to the City, but not in the first blush of romance. It is instead a love poem written to a lover of 20 years, whose endearing and maddening qualities are so intertwined that you cannot tell one from the other. This is a beautiful book by an author worth watching.

Rating:
Summary: Free Association At Its Worst
Review: People that laud this type of 'work' are the type that can read something significant into anything because they don't want to admit that they don't get it. He tries to paint a picture of Gotham using mawkish free association which comes across as pseudo-intellect at its worst/best. I was really looking forward to this book because it sounded like a very cool exercise and interesting look into the greatest city on the planet. Hardbound pretentious excrement.

Rating:
Summary: Over-hyped and negative
Review: This book was in the front of every book store this Christmas, with a lot of praise saying that it "captured the soul of New York". In my opinion, it only captures the cliche of New York. Whitehead does not hesitate to lash out at hipsters and yuppies, those unlucky enough to live in Brooklyn (as he does) and any other fool that tries to enjoy a life here--but enjoyment seems beyond his capability. Even a trip to Central Park is something to be endured because his sterotypical neurotic, sarcastic and hyper-critical "New Yorker" alter-egos can't really appreciate the beauty and grace of the city at all. In this book NY only appears and a place that will falsely dazzle you, beat you up and spit you out. Although the first essay is brilliant (the only one that seems to have been edited at all-probably because it previously appeared in the NY Times Magazine) and the moods evoked by the others are quite clear, I was disappointed that the only mood I ended up feeling was disgust. I'm sorry that for Whitehead and those like him that this city is just a town of pretenders, false lives and dashed hopes. It's home to me-more than one long whine.