- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Picador; First UK Edition edition (9 Jan 1987)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330297538
- ISBN-13: 978-0330297530
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 13 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 647,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
Move over, Ann Beattie. There's a new girl working the Zeitgeist. And this siren of Soho - author of American Dad, 1981 - brings to these 22 whacked-out and weird tales an ironic intelligence and new wave sensibility unparalleled among contemporary chroniclers of post-modern life. The best stories in this ample though wildly uneven collection concern a few Manhattan denizens in particular - Eleanor, a maker of plastic James Bond-doll jewelry, and Stash, her graffiti artist boyfriend. In "The Slaves in New York," "Physics," "Spells," and "Patterns" - to name just a few - these two slaves of real estate and fashion mix kitsch and high culture as they long for "disembodied" and "entropic" lives. "The apartment situation" being what it is, Eleanor puts up with Stash's insane jealousy and deep depressions. The first is caused by Eleanor's chaste encounter with a South African refugee novelist. And the latter results from an article describing Stash's painting, "The Wisdom of Solomon" - in which Quick Draw Mac Graw and Babalooey saw an Eskimo in half - as "the mindless scrawling of a Neanderthal." Everyone's an artist in Janowitz's unreal city, at least when they're not at their day-jobs as receptionists, waitresses, and Xeroxers. Marley Mantello, of "Turkey Talk" and "In and Out of the Cat Bag" (among others), hopes someday to realize his surreal dream: "to construct the Chapel of Jesus Christ as a Woman, adjacent to the Vatican." There are all kinds of latter-day saints and sinners in these punk parables: a pimp with a penchant for Kant ("Modern Saint #271"); a young woman who practices "interior decoration therapy" ("Matches"); and an artist who paints traumatic situations with ground bones and blood from the Westside market ("Who's on First?"). The shorter interludes here tend to be all posturing and affect - a hipper-than-thou send-up of Springsteen or a mere catalogue of junk-food culture. But most of these wickedly funny, terribly knowing tales heighten and transform an already absurd world. (Kirkus Reviews)
Washington Post
Laugh-out loud funny... wonderful.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
tres 80's,
By
This review is from: Slaves of New York (Bloomsbury Classic Reads) (Paperback)
this is a book that has the time it was written in stamped over all it. Tama Janowitz is a contemporary of Brett Easton Ellis,and was also part of Andy Warhol's inner circle . She writes stories that covered similar misadventures to Easton Ellis. This book is more like a set of short stories that cover a interesting variety of women trying to make an honest dollar and get on with there ambitions lives in New York as is often in big cities some of the women end up in less glamorous surroundings than they had hoped for. They are stories in which the protagonists hit hard reality regardless of there dreams. It is funny and sympathetic.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Amusing read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Slaves of New York (Paperback)
This was the first book I read by Ms. Janowitz and the story, for the most part, moves along at a nice pace. There are the various assortment of characters...some making numerous appearances, some only a solo appearance. I did appreciate her witty sense of humour.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews) 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Deeply Modern and 80s,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Slaves of New York (Paperback)
This book has had some trenmendous impacts on me that I never realized until one day when I thought of leg-waxing, I thought of "a tiny women yelling at me in Spanish and pouring hot wax on my legs..." Spend a day in uptown Manhattan with idiosyncratic artists in their most primitive desires and philosophies. This book is unbelievably true and sensitive.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I must be missing something,
By Z. Freeman "Zach" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Slaves of New York (Paperback)
Maybe it's because I was born in the 80's and not partying then, or maybe I'm just too middle-class, but I thought this entire book was pretty mediocre. The characters were interesting, but usually I felt like the author was trying too hard to make them interesting. Janowitz fits in with the Bret Easton Ellis/Jay McInerney style of writing about what it's like to be incredibly spoiled and have no soul. The two aforementioned authors pull that off with a lot more style and ability than she does.
I only read this book because I heard that the character of Stash is in Ellis' book American Psycho. Overall, I found myself interested in the stories and the characters, but most of the stories lacked a certain human aspect that the other two authors know how to provide. This is a good read if you're stuck in an airport all day with nothing else, otherwise I'd recommend getting something with more substance. 5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I read it over and over again,
By "meltingyellow" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Slaves of New York (Paperback)
I've read this book so many times over that I've actually become sentimentally attached to it. Most of the enjoyment from it is reliving the time in which it's set, the 1980s, an interesting time in the way that the clothing was: at times conservative, other times colorful, overall intriguing, but there's still no way in hell you'd want to BE in it again.This book captures the lives of the wacky, egocentric NY artists who reflect their hated yuppie counterparts in that they're upwardly mobile, albeit nonconformistly, greedy and self-centered. But unlike yuppies, the artists of the Lower East Side present far more colorful stories and egos to capitalize on. Fortunately the book has Eleanor, the self-deprecating protagonist to whom we all endear. She keeps the book light-hearted and comical, as she is the offbeat among the offbeat, the miscast in the world of misfits. She is the self-conscious woman who clashes with, and makes uncomfortable, her fellow carefree artists. But she eventually finds her ground in the big city. We root for because she conquers the city the way we wish we could: by keeping intact our integrity, humility, and naivete, and not succumbing to the cynicism and selfishness of the "Me" generation. |
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