Several Ways to Die in Mexico City: An Autobiography of Death in Mexico City - Softcover

Hollander, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936239485 ISBN 13: 9781936239481

Publisher: Feral House, 2012

Synopsis

In the '80s, when author/photographer Kurt Hollander lived in New York and published The Portable Lower East, life there was particularly rough, and cops often drove yellow cabs as a method to surprise and roust its residents. Before the decade ended, Hollander moved to the equally rough climes of Mexico City, making his living writing and photographing for The Guardian, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.

Hollander's visual and textual extravaganza, Several Ways to Die in Mexico City, provides a perspective of this extraordinary city that could only have been caught by an observant outsider who lived in all its nooks and crannies for over two decades.

Crammed with caustic but fair observations of the city's history, food, cults, drugs, and buildings, Hollander proves that he can love a city and culture that also kills its inhabitants softly. The book contains dozens of extraordinary photographs.

While living high in Mexico City, Kurt Hollander edited poliester, the renowned bilingual art magazine about the Americas. He also directed the feature film Carambola and wrote a successful series of children's books. Grove Press published the Portable Lower East Side anthology in 1994.

About this title

Review

" (We can) thank Kurt Hollander for leading us through a city in which many would not have the heart, lungs, stomach, or street smarts to survive.” - New York Journal of Books

"Hollander’s history of Mexican food and alcohol―from Aztec pulque to present-day Coronas―and his analysis of Mexico City’s tap water are brilliant, even if his narration frequently meanders away to other Mexican curiosities. In a city so teeming with interconnected life, who can blame him?" -Daily Beast

"Several Ways to Die in Mexico City stumbled into my lap and changed the way I think about what I eat and drink." - Mythili G. Rao, Hot Reads Blog


" (We can) thank Kurt Hollander for leading us through a city in which many would not have the heart, lungs, stomach, or street smarts to survive.” - New York Journal of Books

"Hollander’s history of Mexican food and alcohol from Aztec pulque to present-day Coronas and his analysis of Mexico City’s tap water are brilliant, even if his narration frequently meanders away to other Mexican curiosities. In a city so teeming with interconnected life, who can blame him?" -Daily Beast

"Several Ways to Die in Mexico City stumbled into my lap and changed the way I think about what I eat and drink." - Mythili G. Rao, Hot Reads Blog

From Booklist

Though designated as an autobiography, filmmaker, photographer, and translator Kurt Hollander’s foray into documentary nonfiction is part geopolitical report, part historical survey, part personal essay. Hollander embellishes his many, many grotesque encounters and close calls with death from inside a culture known to celebrate the Great Beyond, complete with glossy prints of Hollander’s photographs, from smog-smothered skyline panoramas to makeshift gravestones along highways and light poles, to provocative images of Catholic statuary. The most riveting chapters saturate the everyday with inescapable fatality, not just Hollander’s own but also that of a people subjected to a series of unfortunate ironies. Mexico’s foremost metropolis is erected on the ruins of prehistorical Tenochtitlan and is sinking into the earth at a visibly measurable rate. Brand-new Walmarts displace local Mexican markets, whose workers flee north only to end up working as undocumented immigrants at Walmarts in New Mexico. Despite its desert environs, Mexico City suffers recurrent floods, haunted by Lake Texcoco. Death, according to Hollander, pervades the Mexican capital in myriad, imminent, occasionally entertaining forms. --Diego Báez

Edition details

• Publisher: Feral House
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1936239485
• ISBN 13: 9781936239481
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 300