Book description
Meet the denizens of New York City: artists, prostitutes, saints, and seers. All are aspiring toward either fame or oblivion, and hoping for love and acceptance. Instead they find high rents, faithless partners, and dead-end careers. But between the disappointments come snatches of self-awareness, and a strange beauty in their…
Why read it?
1 author picked Slaves of New York as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The only thing that makes me cringe about this book is that I was supposed to be in the film adaptation when I was young, but my (violent and idiotic) boyfriend at the time ruined that opportunity for me. It’s essentially a series of entertaining, hilarious, edgy stand-alone stories that interweave into chapters, turning what could have been short stories into a novel.
It perfectly freezes in amber a moment in time (the 80s NY downtown art scene), the type of incredible characters who lived in it, motivated by conflated goals of self-expression and fame, and how it shaped/distorted/sometimes destroyed…
From Ali's list on The best books about New York City subcultures.
If you love Slaves of New York...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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