Reviews for Lost in the city

The average rating for Lost in the city based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-02-01 00:00:00 Lisa Lumpkin Tryin To Get To You by The Eagles (1950s R&B group from Washington, D. C.) Coming-up on year 6 of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent I'm a late-comer to Edward P. Jones. I missed all the hype over The Known World, but when I did realize there was this idosyntric author from my hometown that wrote books--I kept my eyes open and got both of his short-story books. This review is of his 1st book of short stories that was published when I was two years old. Though published in the early 1990s it is about the world of "Chocolate City" from the 1950s to the late 1980s. It is a look at a world that no longer existed by the time I came along and which is being erased from the very landscape of D. C. as we speak. Rock Creek Park by The Blackbyrds The format of these short stories are interesting. It is no surprise that Dubliners is a big inspiration, with the use of Washington D. C. itself and the thematic device of each story following a person from a progressively older age group as the book progresses. Where Jones breaks from Joyce is that as the main character(s) in each story ages, time itself moves along as well so we see how the city ages with the generations of African-Americans living in it. As the beginning of this book takes place in the 1950s 60% of the adults are further from down South (I should note though that as Washington is a southern city, it has always had African-Americans living in it. That being said, a lot of families--including my own--made there way up during The Great Migration). As the book progresses-on that number is cut in half and by the last story only the very old are non-native born Washingtonians. It is fascinating seeing how these different groups of people relate to each other. Another way this book differs from Dubliners is that unlike with Joyce, there is no unifying theme that connects each story together. In this way, the stories of Lost in the City owe more to Anton Chekhov than anybody else. We simply drop-in to random peoples' lives and see what they are doing. There is no real beginning or ending, but we learn a little something of the people and environment we are in at the time. It is interesting that only one of these stories is actually autobiographical. Though it is easy to see these images playing-out with countless anonymous people in this city. It Don't Mean a Thing - If It Don't Have the Go Go Swing by Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers. The anthem of DC/Maryland/Virginia as long as I've been alive, performed by it's late-"first citizen." Reading this book has been a very personal experience for me. The world of this book was the world experienced by grandparents and my late-father. I thought much of his father who died when I was seven and the world that I saw when I was with him. Even in my early childhood, this DC was disappearing, but enough of it was still around that I could still make-out certain places I remember from my adventures with my father's father. Of course, both of them are gone and my grandparents generation is just about all gone as well. Many of the structures have been demolished by neo-imperialist gentrifiers and the hack-politicians that they control. I remember seeing with my own eyes the destruction of this pre-Gogo music, pre-Reagan-era DC. It is interesting to think that 2/3rds of this book takes place before the advent of Go-Go music--something that I literally can't imagine that area without (though gentrification is even threatening this institution unfortunately). It was good to be transported to this time. to think about the earliest points of my own life and wonder how life was for though old folks I met in the 1990s when they were younger. "She did nothing, aside from following him, with her eyes, with her heart, as far as she could."

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-02 00:00:00 David Grill I can't figure out how these short stories have such fully developed characters. In my imagination, Jones wrote 14 full-length novels, then choose one chapter from each novel for inclusion in this collection. Or in some cases just culled the novel down to its most essential 20 pages. Because I feel as if another fascinating 250 pages exists for each of these stories. There, in between the lines, Jones exposes glimpses of the history and future of each character. I would very much like to read all 14 of these novels - if only they existed!