Manhattan
Colson Whitehead celebrates old Harlem in a hardboiled thriller that’s also a morality tale
For modern America, Harlem is a once maligned, now much vaunted literary totem, which continues to occupy a gargantuan place…
The man who made Manhattan: The Great Mistake, by Jonathan Lee, reviewed
What makes a city? The collective labour of millions packed into its history; the constant forgetting of incomers who arrive…
Bill de Blasio unites cops and protesters — in disgust
New York City is crumbling into shambolic lawlessness and its citizens are growing more afraid and frustrated by the day.…
Mayhem in Manhattan
It’s important — and easy — to tell the difference between protesters and looters. Just as New York should have…
An education in love: City of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilbert, reviewed
One of the chief regrets of book-loving women of my age — and a surprising number of men — is…
To reflect on the brilliance of your writing, you had better be sure of its brilliance
Nominative determinism is the term for that pleasing accord you occasionally find between name and profession: the immigration minister named…
Born again: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh, reviewed
The new novel by the author of the 2016 Booker shortlisted Eileen is at once a jumble of influences —…
Art and aspiration
When Adam Gopnik arrived in Manhattan in late 1980 he was an art history postgrad so poor that he and…
The mother of all problems
For a child, the idea of ‘knowing’ your mother doesn’t compute; she’s merely there. As an adult, there may be…
How New York vulgarians live
I have finally moved into my new flat, a jewel of a place in a pre-first world war Park Avenue…
Woody Allen: a life of jazz, laughter, depression —and a few misdemeanours
Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg), the prolific, Oscar-winning auteur, New Orleans-style jazz clarinettist, doyen of New York delicatessen society,…
Rich, thin and selfish in Manhattan
The scene: a funeral parlour in New York. Doors clang as a family relative, the ‘black sheep’, saunters in halfway…
An Episcopalian vicar made me warm to the principle of women joining gentlemen’s clubs
In 1993, when I was living in Manhattan working for the New Yorker magazine, I was chosen as ‘distinguished visitor’…
