Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Delany, Samuel R

ISBN 10: 0814719198 / ISBN 13: 9780814719190

Published by NYU Press, 1999

Hardcover with Dust Jacket. First Printing. Bound in black boards with red cloth spine strip. Title information to spine in metalic blue. 203 pages. NEW. Not read. Binding firm and square. All corners pointed. Without tears, creases, bumps or chips. Not marked and very clean and bright. Dust jacket same. All books carefully wrapped and sent boxed. Seller Inventory # 23031401

Synopsis:

If one street in America can claim to be the most infamous, it is surely 42nd Street. Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 42nd Street was once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers and movie houses. Over the last two decades the notion of safety-from safe sex and safe neighborhoods, to safe cities and safe relationships-has overcome 42nd Street, giving rise to a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes. 42nd Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester, and New Jersey's suburbs.
Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there: the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being "renovated" behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as "family values." Unless we overcome our fears and claim our "community of contact," it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.

About the Author: Samuel R. Delany is a renowned novelist and critic, whose award-winning fiction includes Dhalgren (1975), Babel-17 (1966), The Mad Man (1994), Dark Reflections (2007), and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2012). In addition to receiving the William Whitehead Memorial Award and the Kessler Award for his lifetime contribution to lesbian and gay writing, Delany was chosen by the Lambda Book Report in 1988 as one of the fifty most influential people of the past hundred years to change our conception of queerness. After more than thirty years of teaching, first at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and later at Temple University, where he served as Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program, Samuel Delany now lives with his partner in Philadelphia.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Publisher: NYU Press
Publication Date: 1999
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: New
Dust Jacket Condition: New
Edition: 1st Edition