SELECTIONS FROM YE OLDE BLOG
Jonathan Lethem Goes to Queens
Two years ago, we ran a virtual book club devoted to reading Jonathan Lethem’s novel Chronic City. This fall, Lethem published a new novel, Dissident Gardens, which takes us not to Brooklyn but to Queens, inspired by in part by the apartment that...
In memoriam: Marshall Berman, 1940-2013
One of the great delights of the decade Cyrus and I spent teaching our Writing New York class was the repeated opportunity to screen clips from Ric Burns's monumental New York: A Documentary Film. Without a doubt, the highlight of that film is -- for me, at least --...
Post-9/11 novel: Open City Book Club, part 4
Today’s installment in our discussion of Teju Cole’s novel comes from guest blogger Martha Nadell, who teaches at Brooklyn College and is at work on a literary history of Brooklyn. The author of a book on image and text in early twentieth-century African American...
The View from Above: Open City Book Club, Part 3
Today's installment in our book club discussion comes from long-time friend-of-the-blog Sunny Stalter, an associate professor in the English Department at Auburn University. Her research examines technology in American literature and culture. Her book, Underground...
Cosmopolitan Conversation: Open City Book Club, Part 2
As Bryan pointed out in last Monday’s post, Teju Cole’s novel Open City is about wandering: Cole’s Nigerian-American narrator, Julius, is a flâneur, both an observer and a participant in the life of the city, primarily New York, but also — for a set of chapters that...
The city as palimpsest
Teju Cole reads from Open City and discusses urban experience at Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2012. More book club discussion from Cyrus on Friday.
Elastic time: Open City book club, part 1
From its first sentence I had a hunch that Teju Cole’s Open City (2011) would have been a perfect fit for the Writing New York syllabus Cyrus and I tinkered with for almost a decade, and when we eventually take up the course again — Inshalla — I take very seriously...
End-of-summer book club: Teju Cole’s Open City
Looking for one last, fantastic read before summer ends? This year I’ve been pitching Teju Cole’s 2011 award-winning novel Open City to anyone who’ll listen. It’s brief but still feels bursting with detailed observation, beautifully written, and as important a novel...
The Goats and Hogs Ordinance
Today is the 365th anniversary of the famous “goats and hogs ordinance” passed in New Netherland under the governorship of Peter Stuyvesant. Here’s the text of the ordinance: Whereas the Honble Director General and Council of New Netherland have daily seen and...
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