City (Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creati) - Hardcover

Lennon, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820323217 ISBN 13: 9780820323213

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2002

Synopsis

How do we come to know a place, and in seeking to know it do we make it foreign from ourselves? Do we tackle it from other perspectives--the excavator, the traveler, the observant witness? Can we know a place without the blur of our identity, or does the attempt to extricate ourselves from the external lead only deeper? Brian Lennon seeks such knowledge in this rare and revolutionary work that blends poetry with narrative, ethnography with autobiography, and philosophy with literature. "City: An Essay" begins and ends with meditations on place, the first an unusual and intriguing excavation of the underground depths and history of New York City and the conclusion a travelogue of Italy that reads like snapshots. But place comes to reside somewhere within the landscape of the imagination.

Though classified as creative nonfiction, "City" is an open genre piece that reads with the rhythm and beauty of poetry. Despite its sometimes philosophical core, occasionally pausing to ponder Kierkegaardian dilemmas, it maintains linguistic grace and self-reflexivity. City is a unique and unmatched experimental work by an emerging and sophisticated writer who is paving exciting new aesthetic and theoretical roads.

About this title

About the Author

Brian Lennon is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of "In Babel's Shadow: Multilingual Literatures, Monolingual States," forthcoming in 2010 from the University of Minnesota Press.

Reviews

"The more or less total loss of control. As in: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Lennon's always capital "C" City is New York, and his flaneur-like speaker haunts the Upper West Side with a calm belied by the above quote, like "the entire sky revolving on the pin of the sun, revealing now serenity, now rage." Carefully registering everything from "Warm body air pouring from collar" to, when on an Italian trip, "Bernini's fish-men tooting water from ornaments," he builds this verse essay from the ground up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Lennon, in a series of short, reflective pieces linked together by five different themes, explores varying aspects of city life. From his apartment in New York, he describes the views looking down on Broadway. His words stop here and there, touching on the weather and the weatherman, and eventually lead to meditative silence, and suddenly gush forth a thought, an inspiration, a moving account of love and the search for its meaning. All city dwellers understand the need to escape, to explore new vistas, and Lennon concludes his self-exploration in Rome, "in the center of what was once a bustling room, an aperture of sky. And there, when you look closer, a tiny fringe of leaves, along the crumbling sill: the tops of trees." Cities don't last, he seems to say, and in the grand scheme of things they are as fleeting as the weather. This book won the 1999 Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction, and Lennon gives a pleasant voice to this emerging genre. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820323217
• ISBN 13: 9780820323213
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112