GOING INTO CITY - Couverture souple

Christgau, Robert

 
9780062238801: GOING INTO CITY

Synopsis

One of our great essayists and journalists—the Dean of American Rock Critics, Robert Christgau—takes us on a heady tour through his life and times in this vividly atmospheric and visceral memoir that is both a love letter to a New York long past and a tribute to the transformative power of art.

Lifelong New Yorker Robert Christgau has been writing about pop culture since he was twelve and getting paid for it since he was twenty-two, covering rock for Esquire in its heyday and personifying the music beat at the Village Voice for over three decades. Christgau listened to Alan Freed howl about rock ‘n’ roll before Elvis, settled east of Manhattan’s Avenue B forty years before it was cool, witnessed Monterey and Woodstock and Chicago ’68, and the first abortion speak-out. He’s caught Coltrane in the East Village, Muddy Waters in Chicago, Otis Redding at the Apollo, the Dead in the Haight, Janis Joplin at the Fillmore, the Rolling Stones at the Garden, the Clash in Leeds, Grandmaster Flash in Times Square, and every punk band you can think of at CBGB.

Christgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going Into the City is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that showed him the way. Like Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, E. B. White’s Here Is New York, Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel, and Patti Smith’s Just Kids, it is a loving portrait of a lost New York. It’s an homage to the city of Christgau’s youth from Queens to the Lower East Side—a city that exists mostly in memory today. And it’s a love story about the Greenwich Village girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.


This is the story of how a kid from Queens helped invent a new form of cultural commentary―and the city, counterculture, and relationships that shaped him.


  • The Birth of Rock Criticism: Go inside the offices of The Village Voice as Robert Christgau pioneers a new form of pop culture commentary and helps shape the conversation around a new generation of music.
  • The Counterculture Years: From Monterey and Woodstock to the rise of the New York punk rock scene at CBGB, this memoir puts you in the room for the pivotal moments that defined a generation.
  • Old New York: A vivid portrait of the city’s evolution from the outer boroughs of Queens to the bohemian life of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village before they were gentrified.
  • Love and Partnership: A candid look at the intellectual and romantic partnerships that defined a life, including Christgau’s marriage to fellow critic Carola Dibbell and his seminal work with Ellen Willis.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l?auteur

Robert Christgau has covered popular music for Esquire, Newsday, Creem, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Blender, MSN Music, and The Village Voice, where he was a senior editor and chief music critic for thirty-two years. He is currently a columnist for Noisey.com, a contributing critic at NPR’s All Things Considered, and a Visiting Arts Professor at New York University. The author of three books based on his hundreds of Consumer Guide columns and two essay collections, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a National Arts Journalism Program Senior Fellow, and a Ferris Teaching Fellow at Princeton. Born and raised in Queens, he has lived in Manhattan’s East Village since 1965.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

“Excellent. . . . Christgau writes with contagious insight about the records, novels, movies and paintings that have shaped his thinking.”—Rolling Stone

The Dean of American Rock Critics, Robert Christgau has been writing about pop culture since he was twelve and getting paid for it since he was twenty-two, covering rock for Esquire in its heyday and personifying the music beat at The Village Voice for over three decades. Christgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going into the City is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that showed him the way. It is also a loving portrait of a lost New York—an homage to the city of Christgau’s youth, from Queens to the Lower East Side, that exists mostly in memory today. And it’s a love story about the Greenwich Village girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.

“Honest, detailed, stirring and sweet.”—Time

“A deeply smart, charmingly gregarious read.”—New York magazine

“A New York love story like no other. . . . As caustic and confrontational as a Clash single, yet as sustaining as an Al Green LP . . . instantly memorable.”—Rob Sheffield, author of Love Is a Mix Tape

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780062238795: Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man – A Love Story and Homage to Rock 'n' Roll's Transformative Power in New York

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0062238795 ISBN 13 :  9780062238795
Editeur : Dey Street Books, 2015
Couverture rigide