Synopses & Reviews
In the underground tunnels below Grand Central Terminal, Lee Stringer -- homeless and drug-addicted over the course of eleven years -- found a pencil to run through his crack pipe. One day, he used it to write. Soon, writing became a habit that won out over drugs. And soon, Lee Stringer had created one of the most powerful urban memoirs of our time.
With humane wisdom and a biting wit, Lee Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive, and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York City. Whether he is portraying "God's corner," as he calls 42nd Street, or his friend Suzi, a hooker and "past-due tourist" whose infant he sometimes baby-sits; whether he recounts taking shelter underneath Grand Central by night and collecting cans by day, or making a living hawking Street News on the subway, Lee Stringer conveys the vitality and complexity of a down-and-out life. Rich with small acts of kindness, humor, and even heroism amid violence and desperation, Grand Central Winter offers a touching portrait of our shared humanity.
Review
"At its best, when the prose lengthens out into easy strides, the storytelling is sound and the characters fresh." John Jiler, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Lee Stringer lived on the streets from the early eighties until the mid-nineties. He is a former editor and columnist of Street News. His essays and articles have appeared in publications including The Nation, The New York Times, and Newsday. He collaborated with Kurt Vonnegut on the book Like Shaking Hands With God: A Conversation About Writing. He lives in Mamaroneck, New York.
Table of Contents
Contents Foreword by Kurt Vonegut
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 What happened was I was
2 When I was out there
3 The Streets of New York City, 1985
4 Grand Central Terminal, Winter 1985, 12:30 A.M.
5 Grand Central Terminal, Winter 1989
6 West Forty-sixth Street, Winter 1989
7 In New York City there are three
8 Hell's Kitchen, Fall 1994
9 Valentine's adoptive father
10 On every smut film
11 I was having a real
12 I was smoked out, tapped out
13 It's time for my nightly
14 Sure, life on the street
15 Dear Homey,
16 Manhattan has only two
17 His name is Marvin
18 If, at the time of this
Afterword
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for discussion for Lee Stringer's Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Lee Stringer has said, "I wanted to put flesh and bones on what they call the issue of homelessness, but not write about it as an issue. I wanted a book about the '80s, when a lot of people were feeling a deepening sense of despair, not just the poor." How does Grand Central Winter achieve these goals?
- Instead of simply telling readers about life on the street, Stringer shows readers life on the street. What techniques does he use to do this?
- What is the style, or the voice, in which Lee Stringer writes each of the pieces in Grand Central Winter? Do you find his perspective realistic or stylized? Angry or dispassionate? Sentimental or clear-eyed? Explain.
- Describe the nature of Stringer's politics, particularly in light of the "Dear Homey" letters in Chapter 15.
- Alongside the expected images of violence and squalor -- images which wholly dominate media depictions of homelessness -- Grand Central Winter breaks refreshing new ground by also putting individual faces on the denizens of the street, and by observing various acts of kindness, humor, and even heroism. How did this book challenge your preconceptions about homeless people? How did it alter or reinforce any of your convictions about social policy and reform?
- Stringer has been driven by a pair of powerful addictions -- to crack cocaine, and to writing. How are these twin obsessions linked, and how do they shape and color the odyssey of Grand Central Winter?
- Beginning with the preface, the book characterizes the 1980s as a time of extreme economic disparity as well as racial and social estrangement. Grand Central Winter digs beneath the surface of the storied Reagan era to reveal how the other half of America lived at the time. How do you look at the 1980s now, and what was your own experience during that decade?
- "In New York City," writes Stringer, "there are three centers for people living on the street: Central Park, Grand Central Terminal, and Central Booking." In what ways have Stringer's portraits of these settings -- in addition to Hell's Kitchen, Times Square, and the Upper East and West Sides -- changed your conceptions of New York City? How does Stringer's New York compare to Woody Allen's New York? To Spike Lee's?
- Which story in Stringer's memoir affected or surprised you the most? Why?