Reviews for Times Square

The average rating for Times Square based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-18 00:00:00 George Kidney I've heard a very good friend of mine use the term "dabbler" more than once. That term fits Adam Gopnik very well. He's a writer for The New Yorker and will seemingly write about anything that catches his attention or, possibly, that he's been assigned to write about. (Though he's been writing for the magazine for thirty years now, and perhaps he chooses his own assignments.) Anyway, his modus operandi seems to me to be to cover a subject, but not dig very deeply into it. Through the Children's Gate is a book about New York City - primarily Manhattan - and a New York City that he knows. (Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it seems to cover a fairly narrow scope.) One problem with Through the Children's Gate is that many of the essays are simply not very interesting. Mr. Gopnik writes a lot about his family - primarily about his children - and that ends up being close to the experience of people showing you photographs of their children. The photos mean a lot to them, probably not so much to you. When he steps away from writing about his family, there are other problems. "That Sunday" is a revisiting of a Sunday gig at the Village Vanguard in 1961 by the Bill Evans Trio that was recorded. It's well known in jazz history, but it seems strange to me that someone would write about that gig when John Coltrane was blowing the roof off the Vanguard later that year in gigs that were recorded. And when Ornette Coleman's groups at the Five Spot around that time were changing the ways that many musicians played jazz and the ways that many listeners heard and listened to the music. I guess that Bill Evans' music is more palatable to the average New Yorker reader than Trane's or Ornette's. When Mr. Gopnik writes about his friend Kirk Varnedoe, an art historian and teacher, he focuses on descriptions of Mr Varnedoe coaching a team of eight year old football players, which included Mr. Gopnik's son. The article certainly humanizes Kirk Varnedoe - that's a fine thing - but it generally ignores his teaching and writing, which I wanted to know more about. Instead I learned about his football coaching skills - interesting and humanizing - but there obviously was more to the man than that. Through the Children's Gate seems like a book that was cobbled together from previously written articles simply to make a book - not always a good thing, and in this case, definitely not. My favorite bit of writing in the book was an epigraph: "Interviewer: Sir, How do you survive in New York City? What do you eat? Sid Caesar (as The Wild Boy): Pigeon. Interviewer: Don't the Pigeons object? Sid Caesar: Only for a minute. - from Your Show of Shows (attr. Mel Brooks) edit - I did enjoy reading Gopnik's Paris to the Moon. Now I'm not sure if it actually was a good book or if the fact that I've never been to Paris just made it a piece of exotica to me.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-24 00:00:00 Grant Miner I received this book from a friend when, after years of living in NYC, I finally left--and nobody could believe it. I've always noticed that about NY (I lived there since I was 17): everyone complains and dreams of moving out, but no one believes anyone would actually do it (though people do, constantly). So I kept the book, through a move to the West and then here to Europe, without ever reading it. I'd read--with enjoyment--a few of Gopnik's pieces in The New Yorker but for the most part, I judged this to be a yuppy, overly privileged Woody Allen sort of thing: look how happy my love is, I live in the best city in the world! Well, it sort of is and sort of isn't. For starters, the whole book is under the unavoidable shadow of 9/11--which changed everything forever, as I know since I was there and my then boyfriend-now husband worked 2 blocks away. Gopnik's handling of this delicate shadow is moving and realistic. Also, the Gopnik's New York is a lived-in New York, an experienced one, of the adult, the parent, the husband. It's not the NY you see via Hollywood movies or TV shows (take any 'Friends' episode, and nothing in it is true!) where 30-something hold implausible jobs, wear unaffordable clothing and live in non-existent apartments! Having walked the streets mentioned by Gopnik and having shared those experiences--as a woman, a mother, a wife--I related completely and I could feel it, sense it, see the city. On the other hand, there are two minuses that prevent me from giving the book 4 stars: one, there's little mention of the 'other' NY: the stress, the narrowness, the crap for your money equation. Even when you're past that stage and can afford not to deal with it daily, it's still there, always, somewhere in the back. And two, Gopnik's writing is uneven. He's no Joan Didion, for eg. There are incredibly lyrical and thought-provoking passages with some incredibly bogged-down, hard to read ones. In all, however, it works. I'm looking forward to trying his first book now, about Paris.