IN THE CITY: Random Acts of Awareness
Colette Brooks, . . Norton, $23.95 (109pp) ISBN 978-0-393-05108-7
"The city always been burdened, even haunted, by its history. The city has never been new." Tell that to Peter Stuyvesant or the formerly Manhattan-based Algonquin Indians, one is tempted to reply to Brooks, a professor of writing at New York's New School University. In this set of free associations on New York City and its environs, Brooks's tone is pitch-perfect NPR-style meditation, all hushed tones juxtaposed with wry commentary and commonsense insights: "Losing her life, I imagine," Brooks notes of a woman killed by an ice cart in 1851, "was the last thing on the woman's mind as she awoke on that mid-nineteenth century morning. She might have felt even worse had she known that news of her misfortune would be proclaimed in such a public fashion" by the newspaper. This slim book is packed with similar speculations from an omniscient perspective that flattens out almost everything with which it comes into contact: the Weathermen-blasted brownstone in the Village, delays on the subway, a July 4th fireworks celebration, an arsonist caught setting fires in his own neighborhood ("maybe he was tiring of all the travel"), summer heat. Since Brooks, who won a PEN/Jerard Fund award, never quite conveys what made a given item interesting to her, the "acts" of this book fail to gather force.
Reviewed on: 04/22/2002
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 128 pages - 978-0-393-24333-8
Paperback - 122 pages - 978-0-393-32441-9