The Lure of New York City
By FUPress
10th December 2014
In Walking New York: Reflections of American Writers from Walt Whitman to Teju Cole, Stephen Miller talks about how New York has been a magnet city for writers, painters, dancers, musicians, financiers, and tramps. It has also been a magnet city for students from all over the world.
Gao Mengzei, who came from China, recently told a New Yorker reporter: “I knew I wanted to come to New York, and Columbia was the only school in the city I knew the name of.” But her first impression of New York was not a good one. “People always ask ‘What’s your first impression of New York? and they never like my response when I say it’s big fat rats!’”
Stephen Miller is a freelance writer and the author of five books, including Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. His articles on literary, political, and cultural questions have appeared in many journals in the United States and Great Britain, including The American Scholar, The Times Literary Supplement, Partisan Review, and Sewanee Review, among others. He has an M.A. in English from Yale and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Rutgers.
Read more…‘Over and Out’, The New Yorker, 10/13/14.