Retrato do autor

Megan Bradbury

Autor(a) de Everyone is Watching

1 Work 39 Membros 2 Críticas

Obras por Megan Bradbury

Everyone is Watching (2016) 39 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
female

Membros

Críticas

Everyone is Watching is purportedly a novel, but it really isn't. It's more like a series of little vignettes from the lives of famous New Yorkers such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Edmund White, Walt Whitman and Robert Moses. The idea seems to be that these little stories add up to telling the story of New York City. It's highly debatable that the book achieves that; there is a lot more to New York and its history than what Bradbury manages to convey here.

The novel has only the barest semblance of a plot, if any, and the line between fiction and fact is so blurred that the whole thing reads as non-fiction (even including footnotes at the end). Readers interested in this subject matter might do better to read the non-fictional The Lonely City which covers similar ground, only better.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
gjky | 1 outra crítica | Apr 9, 2023 |
A 'factional' novel where the author explores change in New York through the eyes of real people. Walt Whitman as he talks to his friend in the train going to New York in the 1890s. Robert Moses as he transforms the city with beaches and parks, pulling down houses and constructing a World's Fair. Robert Mapplethorpe photographs and sleeps his way through the 1960s and 70s art scene, and Edmund White mournfully considers the cleaned up, expensive 21st century city whilst remembering his youth cruising its dark corners. I began googling the works referenced through the book, descriptions of photographs of the city from slum dwellers in the late 19c to films depicting domestic violence. The author used these life stories and word pictures of modern art pieces to ask questions about the way the city changed in response to public works, and how this affected young people coming to the city after it was fashionable.
"Let's go back to the construction of Brooklyn Bridge, says Walt. I was there when the first support was laid in 1870, and I was there when the bridge was completed in 1883. As I walked across the bridge I thought of my humble printing press, what it did - I thought, It is the same, for both the bridge and the press allow ideas to move freely."
… (mais)
1 vote
Assinalado
charl08 | 1 outra crítica | Jul 28, 2016 |

Estatísticas

Obras
1
Membros
39
Popularidade
#376,657
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Críticas
2
ISBN
10
Línguas
1