Death of a Tree

Some years ago I published a book called New York City of Trees. On facing pages of photographs and text, it presented portraits of fifty-five trees in the city’s five boroughs. One was of a Callery pear in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. A mid-sized tree covered in white blossoms each spring, glossy green leaves in the summer, and a mass of orange-yellow leaves in the fall, the species is a familiar sight in cities across the US. At the time of my book’s publication it was the second most widely planted species in Manhattan, after the honey locust. [...]

As I noted in my book, one day in 2008 I drove by and the Callery pear was gone. From friends at the Parks Department I learned that it had been cut down at the request of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority as part of the planned extension of the 7 subway line to Hudson Yards, then in development. Three new buildings necessary for the subway would be built on the lot behind the tree. The Parks Department had approved the removal in exchange for a restitution payment of $22,500, which would cover the cost of planting thirty new trees elsewhere in the neighborhood. Benjamin Swett, The New York Review of Books

 

Paris ’44

This enthralling, cinematic study of the occupation and recapture of the French capital reads like an epic thriller. Andrew Martin, The Guardian

si parla di Paris ’44: The Shame and the Glory di Patrick Bishop (Penguin/Viking)

Virago Press compie 50 anni

It was the early 70s, and in a tiny flat above a synagogue in Chelsea, London, decorated with lime-green paint, red tiles and an alternative cover for Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch on the wall, a group of women sat talking around a dining table.The attic bedsit soon became the first office of the feminist publisher Virago. Ella Creamer, The Guardian

mi piace la foto, mi piace molto la descrizione del piccolo appartamento sopra una sinagoga a Chelsea... e naturalmente: auguri Virago!

Edward Hopper’s New York

A lot of things go missing in the paintings of Edward Hopper. Most notably, it’s people. In the first half of the 20th century, he painted New York when it was the largest city in the world, yet his streets are often empty, or haunted by only a few isolated figures. New York was then, as it is now, a diverse city, rich with racial and ethnographic diversity, but that, too, is absent in Hopper’s imagination. Philip Kennicott, WP

Edward Hopper’s New York Through March 5 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Brooklyn o Manhattan?

In American cultural and intellectual life, New York City sets the tone. As the main hub for the country’s media and frequent originator of trends that percolate through US society, what’s “in” with the New York scene today is often central to American culture tomorrow. And politics, too ­– as US conservatives never tire of noting – is often downstream of culture.

But New York City’s intellectual landscape is increasingly split between two warring scenes, divided by geography, aesthetics and politics. Which of these prevails could affect whether America shifts right or remains where it is. Nick Burns, The New Stateman

e dieci libri sull'ascolto della natura:

From precise transliterations of birdsong to a quest for one square inch of silence, these stories teach us how to open our ears to the world. David George Haskell, The Guardian

Why Cemeteries Matter

As Americans increasingly opt out of burial, cemeteries very well may become obsolete. It’s worth asking, then, especially at a time of year when graveyards loom large in our cultural imagination, what purpose do they serve? Aside from the practical need to dispose of corpses in a sanitary way, do they serve any higher good for the community? Rachel K. Alexander, Tablet

Amo molto passeggiare per i cimiteri, soprattutto quelli americani, o quelli monumentali. L'idea che stiano scomparendo mi turba molto.

Scompaiono anche le città? 

Can you hear the death rattle of the skyscraper? It’s the sound of the free candyfloss cart being wheeled past the rows of empty desks, and the lonely drip of the beer-keg tap by the water cooler. In a desperate attempt to lure employees back to their offices, companies are laying on all manner of novelty treats, from monogrammed water bottles to personalised notebooks. It is hoped that these perks might convince people to leave the house, get on packed trains and jostle for the lifts, all in the name of teamwork and productivity. Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian

Dogopolis

Dog mess once had medicinal uses. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, physicians used it as an astringent in the form of album Graecum (dried and whitened canine excrement).

It was hard for some observers to discuss the canine excrement that was now visible within the modern cityscape. In a letter to the Times of London, Bristol-based Dr. G. Knowles acknowledged the difficulty of discussing the foul matter: “I can only think that people have been comparatively silent regarding this disgusting nuisance out of a sense of delicacy.” Excerpt reprinted from Dogopolis: How Dogs and Humans Made Modern New York, London, and Paris by Chris Pearson, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2021 by the University of Chicago Press. Lapham's Quarterly

Oltre alla cacca dei cani, questa settimana segnaliamo anche il cambiamento che sta avvenendo nelle autobiografie: 

Rather than prioritizing confession and catharsis, today’s authors are focusing on the question of who gets to share their version of things and interrogating the form, along with themselves.  Megan O’Grady, NYT

When the Barbizon Gave Women Rooms of Their Own

On the corner of East Sixty-third Street and Lexington Avenue, in a building where the apartments sell for anywhere from one million to thirteen million dollars, there is a woman who pays around a hundred and thirteen dollars a month in rent. She lives on the fourth floor, and has maid service two days a week, a front-desk staff to take her messages, and a private bricked terrace at the end of her hall. Casey Cep, The New Yorker

Il Barbizon, che nostalgia!

Skyscrapers

Will Self on the meaning of skyscraper. "When it comes to skyscrapers I am, in the proper sense of the word, ambivalent: I hate them for all the obvious reasons ... Yet I also love them – truly, I do. I love their Promethean swagger; I love their ability to transform our perception of the city by proposing a new parallax around which we instantly reorient as we tunnel along at ground level. And I love the way that they are seemingly purpose-built to accompany what Marshall McLuhan described as the “instantaneous medium” of electricity". theguardian.

The Chelsea Hotel, 2

Su Vanity Fair si trovano anche delle belle foto del Chelsea Hotel come è ora, prima della ristrutturazione, e di alcuni degli appartamenti ancora abitati. "You could go to one floor and talk about theater with Stefan Brecht,” remembers former resident Scott Griffin, “and go to another floor and talk to Arnold Weinstein about poetry and then have dinner downstairs with Arthur Miller. There aren’t many buildings in New York like that". vanityfair.

The Chelsea Hotel

Il Chelsea Hotel è in fase di ristrutturazione. Perderà la sua aura? Vanity Fair gli dedica un lungo articolo, corredato da molte testimonianze. E annuncia l'uscita di un libro che ne racconta la storia, Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel, di Sherill Tippins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
"Today the halls of the Chelsea Hotel are salted with dust. The hundreds of paintings that adorned its walls have been locked away in storage. The doors to abandoned apartments are whitewashed and padlocked. Hotel operations ceased in 2011 for the first time in 106 years, and now the few remaining residents roam the echoing corridors like ghosts. They have watched workers haul out antique moldings, stained glass, even entire walls. Ancient pipes ruptured during renovations, flooding apartments, and neighbors returned home from work to find their front doors sealed in plastic wrap. The Chelsea’s new owners say that the building had fallen into dangerous disrepair, and they are restoring it to its original condition. Some residents believe that they are being forced out, and that the Chelsea as they know it—and as it was known to residents from Sherwood Anderson and Thomas Wolfe to Sid Vicious and Jasper Johns—will soon vanish before the city’s merchant greed". vanityfair.

Chicago

Tre nuovi libri su Chicago: The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream, di Thomas Dyja (Penguin Press); Golden: How Rod Blagojevich Talked Himself OOut of the Governor's Office and Into Prison, di Jeff Coen e John Chase (Chicago Review Press), e You Were Never in Chicago, di Neil Steinberg (The University of Chicago Press). nytbr.

The American Folk Art Museum

The only surprising thing about the Museum of Modern Art’s long-anticipated announcement that it will demolish Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Museum of American Folk Art building of 1997–2001, an architectural gem that abuts the MoMA campus on Manhattan’s West 53rd Street, is that this deplorable decision took so long to occur. ...
The tragic turn of events on 53rd Street is nothing less than cultural vandalism, made more odious because it will be carried out by a presumed institutional guardian of high culture and contemporary design. As MoMA grows and grows and builds and builds, the destruction of this architectural landmark may someday be forgotten by the general public; but for those who care about the long view of art, this needless desecration will remain a permanent blot on the reputation of those responsible for it. nybooks.

Detroit City Is the Place to Be

Cass Technical High School, foto di Andrew Moore

Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis (Metropolitan Books), di Mark Benelli, parla del possibile futuro di Detroit.
Q. You write extensively about “ruin porn” — photographs of the area’s crumbling and abandoned structures. Does this trend of taking aesthetic pleasure from Detroit’s troubles offend you as a native of the place?

A. I’m not offended by photographers like, say, Andrew Moore, even though he’s not from Detroit and spent very little time in the city – technically his work is stunning, and when you see some of these buildings up close, or sneak inside, there is a majesty and an aesthetic validity. I also sympathize with the point of view of people who have lived among these ruins for years, sometimes decades, and would happily see them all bulldozed tomorrow. I just hope a balance can be struck. Some of the industrial history, especially, is worthy of preservation, and could become tourist attractions — as opposed to, say, strip malls or stadium parking lots. nyt.

A Roman Cat Fight

Sulla New York Review of Books si occupano della lotta che Repubblica sta ingaggiando contro le cat ladies. Massimo Gatto si chiede il perché, "Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi must have finally lost all claim to our attention, because La Repubblica has decided to change the target of its latest crusade. Since 1993, a former opera singer named Silvia Viviani has maintained a sanctuary for cats in the center of town, in a Fascist-era archaeological excavation called the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina, or Largo di Torre Argentina. The cat sanctuary has sterilized tens of thousands of animals, healed and vaccinated thousands more. But La Repubblica has suddenly decided to be outraged that cats might find refuge among these unprepossessing ruins. ... " nybooks.

Real Estate in Literature

John Lanchester’s recent novel, Capital [Faber], is full of sharply drawn characters, men and women living at different points on the class spectrum of modern England, whose lives intersect in a series of increasingly fraught episodes. Yet one of its most memorable characters isn’t a person at all, but, rather, a street. newyorker

la strada è Pepys Road, la città Londra, il periodo 2007-8. Sembra tutto molto appettitoso.

Haikus for Safer Streets

"Curbside Haiku," a DOT safety education and public art campaign launched in November 2011, is a set of twelve bright, eye-catching designs by artist John Morse that mimic the style of traditional street safety signs.  Each sign is accompanied by a haiku poem. The "Curbside Haiku" installation can be seen citywide on 144 signs to promote road safety. Each design and haiku delivers a safety message by focusing on a transportation mode.

Placed near eye level in high-crash locations near cultural institutions and schools, the colorful signs draw attention to the critical importance of shared responsibility among pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists in keeping New York City's streets safe. L'haiku dell'immagine è il seguente: Cars  crossing  sidewalk/ Worst New York City hotspot/ To run into friends. cliccare qui per vedere tutti i segnali haiku.

La mappa a griglia di NYC ha 200 anni

Henry James condemned it a century ago as a "primal topographic curse." Rem Koolhaas, the architect and urbanist, countered that its two-dimensional form created "undreamed-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy." More recently, two historians described its map, regardless of its flaws, as "the single most important document in New York City's development." ... The grid certified by the city's street commissioners on March 22, 1811, spurred development by establishing seven miles of regular, predictable street access. It also laid the groundwork for nearly 2,000 acres of landfill that would be added to the island over the next two centuries. The commissioners concluded that New York "is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and that straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in." nyt.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

E' uno scrittore e sceneggiatore americano di origini iraniane. Questa settimana sul New Yorker è uscito un suo bel racconto, "Paranoia" sull'amicizia di due uomini. Cressida Leyshon lo intervista: "Q. When you started thinking about the story were you drawn first to the friendship, or to the idea of young men facing the prospect of a war, or to something else altogether? A. But when I began working on “Paranoia” I was most strongly drawn to the idea of a city and the ways in which it responds to war. In this particular case, a mid-sized, post-industrial city. newyorker.

Elogio della città

Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (Penguin Press). "Cities magnify people's strengths, Glaeser argues, because ideas spread more easily in dense environments. If you want to compete in a global marketplace it really helps to be near a downtown. Companies that are near the geographic center of their industry are more productive. Year by year, workers in cities see their wages grow faster than workers outside of cities because their skills grow faster. Inventors disproportionately cite ideas from others who live physically close to them", David Brooks recensisce entusiasticamente il saggio di Glaeser, professore di economia a Harvard, che è un elogio alla città in generale, e a Chicago in particolare. nyt.