At the Strangers' Gate
Published on 19. October 2017
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-78648-919-7 (ISBN)
Description
'A dazzling talent' Malcolm Gladwell
When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young, the arty, and the ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life's consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder.
At the Strangers' Gate builds a portrait of this particular moment in New York through the story of this couple's journey--from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family. Gopnik transports us to his tiny basement room on the Upper East Side, and later to SoHo, where he captures a unicorn: an affordable New York loft. He takes us through his professional meanderings, from graduate student-cum-library-clerk to the corridors of Conde Nast and the galleries of MoMA.
Between tender and humorous reminiscences, including affectionate portraits of Richard Avedon, Robert Hughes, and Jeff Koons, among many others, Gopnik discusses the ethics of ambition, the economy of creative capital, and the peculiar anthropology of art and aspiration in New York, then and now.
When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young, the arty, and the ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life's consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder.
At the Strangers' Gate builds a portrait of this particular moment in New York through the story of this couple's journey--from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family. Gopnik transports us to his tiny basement room on the Upper East Side, and later to SoHo, where he captures a unicorn: an affordable New York loft. He takes us through his professional meanderings, from graduate student-cum-library-clerk to the corridors of Conde Nast and the galleries of MoMA.
Between tender and humorous reminiscences, including affectionate portraits of Richard Avedon, Robert Hughes, and Jeff Koons, among many others, Gopnik discusses the ethics of ambition, the economy of creative capital, and the peculiar anthropology of art and aspiration in New York, then and now.
Reviews / Votes
Engaging, witty, thoughtful, clever, casual, ebullient, erudite and thoroughly modern * Spectator, on Adam Gopnik * Gopnik's mind darts about like mercury as he tells his tale * The Times, on Adam Gopnik * The distinctive brilliance of Gopnik's essays lies in his ability to pick up a subject one would never have believed possible to think deeply about then cover it in thoughts. He is truly able to see the whole world in a grain of sand -- Alain de Botton * New York Times Book Review, on Adam Gopnik * Adam Gopnik's avid intelligence and nimble pen . . . Conscientious, scrupulously savvy * John Updike, on Adam Gopnik * Adam Gopnik is a dazzling talent - hilarious, winning and deft * Malcolm Gladwell, on Adam Gopnik * By virtue of his exceptional observational and analytical powers, acute emotional and moral exactitude, and charmingly rueful sense of humor, he turns in a riveting and incandescent chronicle of personal evolution vividly set within the ever-morphing, cocaine-stoked crucible of ferocious ambition that was 1980s Manhattan . . . Arabesque, captivating, self-deprecating, and affecting, Gopnik's cultural and intimate reflections, in league with those of Alfred Kazin and Joan Didion, are rich in surprising moments and delving perceptions into chance, creativity, character, style, conviction, hard work, and love. -- Donna Seaman * Booklist * Gopnik has written with entrancing penetration on just about everything . . . He's one of the silkiest stylists around -- Christopher Bray * Spectator * Anyone who worries that artificial intelligence might some day outpace the faulty circuitry inside human headsshould be cheered by the existence of Adam Gopnik. His brain has nothing to fear from electronic competition. It
is an organ housed in a body, kindled by the appetites and affections of the flesh; it operates friskily, risking vast generalities that it clinches with neat, nimble aphorisms . . . Performed by him, such verbal flourishes are both witty and wise. Gopnik is a sleek stylist, and a high-minded, big-hearted moralist into the bargain. -- Peter Conrad * Observer * Self-deprecation, his honesty, his humour, his amiable, relaxed acknowledgement of his own foibles. In short, he's enormously likeable . . . A real treat . . . A piece of real insight, perfectly put . . . Heartening proof of a life lived fully, and fully savoured * Times Literary Supplement * Gopnik's sentences build into paragraphs that are architectural feats . . . He is investigative again, tracing this psychic image of his own time, his own New York * Guardian *
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Quercus Publishing
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
495 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78648-919-7 (9781786489197)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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Person
Adam Gopnik has been writing for the New Yorker since 1986. He is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism, and the George Polk Award for magazine reporting. From 1995 to 2000 he lived in Paris; he now lives in New York City with his wife and their two children.