The Colossus of New York

by Colson Whitehead

Book Overview

In a dazzlingly original work of nonfiction, the two time Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys recreates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise, and the heartbreak of New York.

Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in--or spent time--in the greatest of American cities.

A masterful evocation of the city that never sleeps, The Colossus of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400031249
• ISBN13: 9781400031245
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

This is a good book if you are a true New Yorker

The book was interesting & I lived around NYC for many, many years so have been there many times. However, I do not feel a real connection to it & now live down south. The writing style is unique & captures a different way of looking at things, pertaining to living and/or working in New York City. However, for an outsider, you would just feel like an outsider & get a peek at a different world. I feel that you have to be a true New Yorker to find this book fulfilling.

Colossus of New York

Colson Whitehead's The Colossus of New York is unlike any travel book I have previously read. Instead of the dull, monotonous reviews of a guidebook, Whitehead presents an insiders take of one of the most complex cities in the world. While traditional guides can be useful, Colossus of New York presents a true New York experience, from transportation difficulties to the affect of weather on the population. By jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint, much like Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Whitehead frames New York from many different perspectives. This writing style creates a more wholesome picture of the city, and is much more enjoyable for the reader. With all the different perspectives comes many humorous takes on human actions, such as kids "detonating puddles" in the streets. This book is very entertaining, and is well worth a read. Go to http://www.supertightstuff.com for more cool stuff.

ride the riffs, friend

Colson Whitehead's "The Colossus of New York" is a sort of prose poem to New York. But interestingly enough, the city's identity is almost incidental. New York could be any megalopolis. Whitehead simply uses it as a convenient dumping ground for heaping piles of metaphor, innuendo, and wry pseudo-Freudian slip-riffs. As Whitehead eventually says: "Talking about New York is a way of talking about the world." He even outdoes Iain Sinclair in this territory because, hey, "Colossus" is actually readable. Whitehead sculpts sentences here with dazzling, fluid mastery. In sentence after sentence, he manages to surprise you, keeping you in gleeful suspense for that next line, and the next one... And yet it never feels overwrought or exhausting, probably because he pays equal attention to the rhythm of his prose (this is one of those books you can't help reading aloud). Here's one of my many favorite passages, set in the subway system: "This is the fabled journey through the underground, folks, and it's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. On the opposite track it's a field of greener grass, you gotta beat trains off with a stick. From his secret booth the announcer scares and reassures alternatively. The postures on the platform sag or stiffen appropriately. With a dial controlling the amount of static. What are their rooms like, the men at the microphones. One day the fiscal importunities of the subway announcer's union will be exposed and that will be the end of the hot tubs and lobster, but until then they break out the bubbly. Look down the tunnel one more time and your behavior will describe a psychiatric disorder. It's infectious. They take turns looking down into darkness and the platform is a clock: the more people standing dumb, the more time has passed since the last train. The people fall from above into hourglass dunes. Collect like seconds." I also recommend the audio book edition of this title, as Whitehead himself reads the thing in a dizzying performance. It's like a long shot of aggression with a beat-poetry rhythm and a helping of faux snottiness, all orchestrated to allow us to experience the idea of street-level New York in a manageable package.

Beautiful Prose Poem

This short work captures in beautifully evocative language the moods amd nuances of daily life in New York City. It is a book that expresses so accurately the feelings that I personally experience in New York that I wish this is the book I had written. Thankfully Colson Whitehead has put these observations and feelings into words and expressed them for all New Yorkers in spirit to savor and reflect on again and again. A wonderful book for current residents, transplanted natives (like me) and visitors who want to get inside the pulse of the greatest city on the planet.

One of the best books of 2003

...and definitely my favorite book about New York. Although it is non-fiction, "Colossus" is as vibrant and impressionistic as Whitehead's novels. Whitehead's prose style perfectly captures the buzz and hustle of the city; it's spare, bitter, and funny. The short, even choppy text changes perspective from sentence to sentence: in a chapter on subways, for example, you're in one passenger's head, then another, then another. The effect gives the same sensation as New York itself: a swarm of individuals making up the hive.Everything Whitehead has to say about his city is apt: New York regulars and occasional visitors will find the shock of recognition on every page. My own favorite, about a subway car full of strangers: "If you don't know what time it is, wait for a peek while he changes his grip." If you have not tried that yourself, you should spend more time in NYC.

A beautiful little book.

I read a great deal of this book in a bookstore this afternoon, knowing good and well that I had no business buying another book - I ended up buying it (half because I was in love with it, half because the author was doing a reading at the same bookstore later in the evening and I wanted a signed copy). Sufficed to say - I went to the reading, finished the book on the train and I am in love with this man's words and have fallen in love with New York AGAIN (both his and mine)The writing is so beautiful and raw and smart and witty and has the tendency to remind us how wondrous all of the things we overlook as ordinary really are and just how singular NY reallt is. And, of course, god bless the man who can write in tons of tenses and not lose the audience's interest. Whitehead feels to me (having not read his other work) like the rare kind of writer who can write to and for anyone. Everyone is getting this book for christmas. Everyone. I hope many read it, its give-you-goosebumps lovely.