cover image IN THE CITY: Random Acts of Awareness

IN THE CITY: Random Acts of Awareness

Colette Brooks, . . Norton, $23.95 (109pp) ISBN 978-0-393-05108-7

"The city always been burdened, even haunted, by its history. The city has never been new." Tell that to Peter Stuyvesant or the formerly Manhattan-based Algonquin Indians, one is tempted to reply to Brooks, a professor of writing at New York's New School University. In this set of free associations on New York City and its environs, Brooks's tone is pitch-perfect NPR-style meditation, all hushed tones juxtaposed with wry commentary and commonsense insights: "Losing her life, I imagine," Brooks notes of a woman killed by an ice cart in 1851, "was the last thing on the woman's mind as she awoke on that mid-nineteenth century morning. She might have felt even worse had she known that news of her misfortune would be proclaimed in such a public fashion" by the newspaper. This slim book is packed with similar speculations from an omniscient perspective that flattens out almost everything with which it comes into contact: the Weathermen-blasted brownstone in the Village, delays on the subway, a July 4th fireworks celebration, an arsonist caught setting fires in his own neighborhood ("maybe he was tiring of all the travel"), summer heat. Since Brooks, who won a PEN/Jerard Fund award, never quite conveys what made a given item interesting to her, the "acts" of this book fail to gather force. (June)

Forecast:While Brooks has written for the New Republic and Partisan Review, she may not have enough name recognition in the punditocracy to drive promotion and sales, though an East Coast author tour is planned. Readers looking for recent thoughts on New York street life and history are best off with Thomas Beller's edited collection New York: Before and After (Forecasts, Jan. 21) or Kenneth L. Jackson's Encyclopedia of New York City.