The Heart of the World: 0000 (Vintage departures) - Softcover

Cohn, Nik

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679744371 ISBN 13: 9780679744375

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1993

Synopsis

"The history of Broadway has been written before, but never better. . . . The verbal energy that pours off these pages is enough to transform the hell of...Times Square into a rough-hewn heaven, neon lit and open all night. . . . The only thing wrong with this book is it isn't longer." --Newsweek

Nik Cohn ushers readers along the street he calls "The Heart of the World." producing a book that is a resplendent pageant of New York's high--and low--life. Among the characters we meet are a golden-tongued cab driver who calls himself a "collector of farces"; a pickpocket with the terrifying gift of impersonating his marks; a heartbreakingly beautiful Dominican transvestite named Lush Life; strippers; pseudo-prophets; and a disgraced political veteran of the days when the graft was still honest. Conducted by a writer with the manic energy of a sideshow barker and the full-blooded lyricism of a raucous poet, this is a bebop odyssey along the Great White Way that reaches in implication far beyond the streets of New York to document the ever-evolving mixtures that make up America itself.

"A lovely, bracing book, full to bursting with juicy, tasty, rancid life. While making its bawdy way through crowded spaces . . . it also travels through modern times . . . wondrous." --USA TODAY

About this title

Review

"The verbal energy that pours off these pages is enough to transform the hell of places like Times Square into a roughhewn heaven, neon lit and open all night. The history of Broadway has been written before but never better...Overflowing with voluble "animal spirits," it is a feast for anyone who loves good stories. The only thing wrong with it is, it isn't longer." (Newsweek)

"Not since Damon Runyon wrote his fables of Harry the Horse, Sleepout Sam Levinksy and Lone Louie, has Broadway had a chronicler to do justice to its picaresque excess...The Heart of the World is a walk up Broadway, an imaginative leap into its past and its present. Runyon wrote fiction based loosely on fact. Cohn writes fact with the vividly colourful brush-stroke of fiction" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Cohn's walk up Broadway is a fascinating trip for, though the Great White Way has fallen on desperate times, he manages to fit in a lot of the street's history along with his vivid stories about its sleaze-ridden present. His style is electric, crackling with one-liners" (Sunday Times)

"A kind of day trip through an X-rated Disneyland, full of hucksterism and magic and tawdry, hard-luck scenes...Cohn weaves a story retrieved from all the histories of New York: the tales of Wall Street and ward-boss politics, of theater and finery and sex, money, power." (Boston Globe)

"Here comes everybody, a cavalcade of misfits, each their own short story, and Cohn in the role of recording angel" (Independent)

Book Description

A totally unique account of travelling the length of Broadway, brilliantly evoking both its magic and its darker side, from the author of Awopbopaloobop Awopbamboom.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679744371
• ISBN 13: 9780679744375
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 380