I read this book some years ago when a friend sent it to me. Its prose was fascinating with a mesmerising switching of narrators and a splendid and entrancing portrait of New York City. I felt it was well-written but perhaps a little too short. I was glad to learn yesterday that Mr. Whitehead just got the Pulitzer for 2017 for his book the Underground Railroad, so you can be sure this will be moving up on my TBR!A hearty congrats to Colson Whitehead!

Like reading a Godfrey Reggio movie, all it needed was a Philip Glass soundtrack. I hate leaving Perth but I love to read hugely talented writers passionately explain what it is like to inhabit their own town and the world agrees that Colson Whitehead is a hugely talented writer and The Colossus of New York proves that he is a true New Yorker. A wonderful reading experience.

In this homage to his beloved city, Whitehead weaves 13 pieces of 13 different locales. It's penned in fragmented sentences that convey his message that this is a city of fragments - some fragments are subtle enough to evade your detection, others are sharp enough to cut and wound. And in the end no one can ever assemble the experiences into a whole as the landscape is constantly shifting, always changing - your favorite deli is now an H&M, your auto mechanic can no longer afford the rent and ha...

3+ Fun and biting freeform riffs about life in NYC. Port Authority, Rain, Subway, Central Park etc. A few of them really clicked. By the end, I felt like after a day in Times Square. Overloaded!

My introduction to Colson Whitehead was The Underground Railroad, and while I'm eager to read more of his fiction, I was curious about his non-fiction. This is a sprawling account of New York City life, constructed and written in rhythmic fragments that slice at the strange coupling of anonymity and intimacy that defines city life. He smoothly translates the mental work of living in the city while still building up the emotional experience of it. For all those fragmented sentences, Whitehead wri...

Don't let my low rating dissuade you from reading this. I was expecting one thing and got something else entirely, and just couldn't get over my feeling of disappointment.Whitehead is an observer of people, and a skilled writer. I had been led to believe this was a masterful essay about NYC, a city that has always interested me -- not because I have much interest in the city itself, but rather because so many talented people have chosen to live there and write about it. This extended essay, whic...

Sorry, read this one many years back and loved, loved, loved it. But it was long enough ago that I do not feel confident enough in my collander-strength memory to post an actual review.

A dreamlike meditation on New York City. Beautiful.

Collosus of New York is so devastatingly good I cannot do it justice on this page. Colson Whitehead has written a love song to the city of New York in a way that maybe only the Metropolitan region will understand. His prose is so understatedly beautiful, it is almost lost in its simplicity of the feeling he confers to the reader. He has done a remarkable job of catching a sensibility about the city, but not the broad brush strokes everyone sees and knows, but the fine lines only the locals under...

A loving look at the beauty and misery that is NYC for those who live there, those who’ve moved there, those who’ve vacationed there and those who’ve heard stories about the crazy place that it can be. My favourite viewpoints/essays were Port Authority and the experience of taking the bus there, outta there, and the importance of its place as an intersecting pathway to the rest of the country. It was vivid touching in its accuracy and much more detailed and lucid than the last essay about JFK. I...

This beautifully written book is shelved under "essays," but really it should be prose poetry. Colton Whitehead's love of New York is apparent in every paragraph. He describes the city with its vibrancy, drama, shadows, beauty and ugliness incredibly vividly. It's a small book that you'll want to keep handy to get a shot of good writing.

Colson Whitehead delivers yet another course in strong writing. The Colossus of New York is a love letter to New York city. Whitehead captures the ebb, flow, and character of JFK, rain in the city, and Times Square. The collection - a series of short pieces linked by gymnasticaly clever language and topic, to form a pre-twitter, twitter-styled novella. Though less fluid than the other writing I've read by Whitehead - the clipped sentences, point of view changes, and clever language, all togethe...

I love this writer. I will read him again. His publishers got his manuscript in their hands, and were, like, "What do we DO? This guy writes like a mofo! He's unbelievable! There's absolutely no story whatsoever, not a character to speak of, and it's not memoir or really essay but it's maybe poetry. Do you think it's poetry? But, publisher friends, every single sentence is gold, PURE GOLD. Figurative language up the kazoo! I mean, sure, you're exhausted after ten minutes of reading. And the writ...

What a beautiful love letter to an incredible city.

One of the biggest selling points for this book is that Whitehead (a New Yorker) is largely writing it for those of us who are visitors to the city. He knows his audience, there are no inside jokes about the city here. You can even feel the grittiness of some of the neighborhoods in the writing but most of the content is related to the well known landmarks like Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, Coney Island, Broadway, Times Square, etc. The one drawback to the book is there is a lack of history...

This book has a certain grace, even a certain beauty in its efforts to capture the interior lives of New Yorkers. If you've spent any time at all in the City you will immediately recognize the scenes Whitehead describes, and he does so lyrically. But the writing seems absolutely devoid of joy; hints of positive emotions are quickly doused by predictions of doom and disappointment. Whitehead's "City in Thirteen Parts" is intensely cynical about every aspect of life- work life, home life, even a t...

When I read a book, I underline lines I like. Here are all the lines I underlined, mashed together:You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now. Somewhere in that fantastic, glorious mess was the address on the piece of paper. The only skyscrapers visible from your stroller were the legs of adults but you got to know the ground pretty well and started to wonder why some sidewalks sparkle at certain angles, and others don't. The city knows you bette...

If you have ever lived in NYC, this book will strike chords.If you have never lived in NYC, this book will hint at the world.I truly loved reading this. The craft of excellent word-choice is alive and well. The turns that 7-word sentences can take and reverse are brilliantly shown. The shifts in persepctive and perception are constnat without being jarring.I can't really say enough about this one without going into some sort of swoon or writing an essay. I think I'll just choose to state that th...

More narrative poetry than essay, this books creatively encapsulates the minutiae of what life in NYC really feels like, whether you were born there or just lived there for a little while.

Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts (Doubleday, 2003)When one encounters the name "Colson Whitehead," one is apt to think of an old Irish immigrant viewing the city through a jaundiced eye, bleary from another night of stumbling home in rush hour only to find he's locked himself out of his bachelor pad and can't get to the can of beans sitting on the counter seductively calling his name. Instead, what we're given is a young (younger than I am, anyway) born-and-ra...