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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Five Flights Up: And Other New York Apartment Storiesby Toni Schlesinger
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A flop house, a pumping station, a maid's room, a homeless center, a former brothel, a Richard Meier building, a circus trailer, a sail boat, a skyscraper, buildings named Esther and Loraine just a few of the places New Yorkers call home. For the past eight years writer Toni Schlesinger has been bringing us these conversation places in her weekly column in the Village Voice. Through her incisive questioning, original writing, and comic parallel reveries, Schlesinger creates miniature documentaries on the lives, passions, hopes, and heartbreaks of many of New York City's millions. Five Flights Up chronicles people living in New York's extremes, occupying 150-square-foot spaces, paying over half their income for rent, living eight in an apartment, and taking showers in twos to save time. These are people who make movies in their living room and then sleep in it later. They surround themselves with their baby teeth, with 500 volumes of Moby Dick, plaster rabbis, birds' nests, 30 modernist chairs, 50 loaves of Wonder Bread, and more. In Schlesinger's hands, their stories are much more than novelties. Artists, actors, dancers, librarians, social workers, bus boys, bankers, porn stars, au pairs, urban planners, bakers, shamans, masseuses, web designers, and students come alive when they discuss where they came from and where they're going. Each interview is a vivid and insightful portrait, revealing the creative energy, camaraderie, desperation, and hope that fuel the daily lives of people in New York and everywhere. Review:"'I knew rooms were just a lot of stage sets,' Schlesinger writes of taking on the Village Voice 'Shelter' column in 1997. The drama taking place behind New Yorkers' drawn curtains, Schlesinger reveals in this selection of interviews, is varied and vivid: bizarre, unhappy, frenetic, obsessive, euphoric, awkward, and endless. Divided into 15 sections, the book captures people at a moment in time, before 9/11 and after, telling the deeply personal stories that lead to new addresses: stories of death, ambition, love and rent control. Schlesinger finds a man with a 129-pound rubber band ball, a 105-pound pet pig in Brooklyn and a man who has turned his living room into a giant pinhole camera. 'Manhattan's density,' Schlesinger notes, 'is 871 times that of the U.S. as a whole.' Rents are as sky high as the architecture, which explains why a family of four might keep their rent-stabilized 295-square-foot studio in Little Italy. Sometimes Schlesinger enters homes and smells gas, sometimes dumplings, and it's not uncommon for her to make interviewees ill at ease. 'Don't you want to write about the apartment?' one man asks. Her associative ramblings aren't binge reading material, but the book's Spartan design and casual, if bizarre, banter offer sliver-sized glimpses into the epic stories of New York lives." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Book News Annotation:This collection of essays from Schlesinger's Village Voice column
"Shelter" chronicles the extremes to which New Yorkers must go to
live in their favorite city. Schlesinger interviews people who live
in 150-square-foot rooms, flop houses, circus trailers, former
brothels and many other innovative spaces. Each interview is a vivid
portrait, revealing the creative energy, camaraderie, desperation and
hope that fill the lives of these residents.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis:A flop house, a pumping station, a maid¿s room, a homeless center, a former brothel, a Richard Meier building, a circus trailer, a sail boat, a skyscraper, a basement, an attic, buildings named Esther and Loraine ¿ just a few of the places New Yorkers call home. For the past eight years writer Toni Schlesinger has been bringing us these ¿conversation places¿ in her weekly column in the Village Voice.
Through her incisive questioning, original writing, and comic parallel reveries, Schlesinger creates miniature documentaries on the lives, passions, hopes, and heartbreaks of many of New York City¿s millions. Five Flights Up chronicles people living in New York¿s extremes, occupying 150-square-foot spaces, paying over half their income for rent, living eight in an apartment, and taking showers in twos to save time. These are people who make movies in their living room and then sleep in it later. In Schlesinger¿s hands, their stories are much more than novelties. About the AuthorToni Schlesinger is a columnist for the Village Voice and a New Yorkbased fiction writer and theater artist. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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