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8th out of 486 books
—
80 voters
Slaves of New York
Meet the denizens of New York City: artists, prostitutes, saints, and seers. All are aspiring toward either fame or oblivion, and hoping for love and acceptance. Instead they find high rents, faithless partners, and dead-end careers. But between the disappointments come snatches of self-awareness, and astrange beauty in their encounters with one another.
Paperback
Published
July 5th 2004
by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
(first published 1986)
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I remember what a stir this caused when it came out; how vociferous were the jealous anti-Janowitz crowd. So anyway it was speaking to me with its gaudy '80s cover design (not shown here) and my memory of a cultural gap unfilled and so I succumbed to the $3.98 price and purchased same.
Read the first two stories and apart from the interesting physical detail and attitudes found them a tad quaint. But short and enjoyable. New York stories kind of interest me at the moment after having enjoyed Arth...more
Read the first two stories and apart from the interesting physical detail and attitudes found them a tad quaint. But short and enjoyable. New York stories kind of interest me at the moment after having enjoyed Arth...more
I think the best thing about this book might be the hilarious cover.
Slaves of New York is a linked series of short stories which, while not adding up to a novel, are for the most part observant and fun takes on the art scene in New York City in the 1980s.
Many of the characters are met once and never heard from again but a few: jewelry designer Eleanor, and the artists Stash and Marley being the most prominent, are evenly spaced throughout. I feel that Eleanor with her neuroses and her quiet mus...more
Slaves of New York is a linked series of short stories which, while not adding up to a novel, are for the most part observant and fun takes on the art scene in New York City in the 1980s.
Many of the characters are met once and never heard from again but a few: jewelry designer Eleanor, and the artists Stash and Marley being the most prominent, are evenly spaced throughout. I feel that Eleanor with her neuroses and her quiet mus...more
2 likes
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like
· see review
I loved this book. Haven't read it in a while, but fondly remember the characters. Janowitz shows us the NYC 80's art scene from the inside out. This book is a modern classic and is recommended to anyone interested in art, the eighties, or the struggles of urban life.
Semi-sharp satire of the New York art world in the 80s.
Not as brilliant, I think, as the blurbs on the wrappers make it out to be. But mostly good.
Not as brilliant, I think, as the blurbs on the wrappers make it out to be. But mostly good.
the writing is casual and chatty, the stories amusing and strange. sort of a trifle, yet such an enjoyable one.
3 likes
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While I found the 'floating' style a little annoying (I prefer to become deeply involved in the characters), it was still fun. Dated though it is, I find people like her characters still exist. I don't think it was as fantastic as many people claimed and I found I had to force myself to finish as the novel lost my interest from the middle. I sometimes feel when reading a novel with a bunch of stories that never get 'deep' or 'involved' that I am being cheated and my time ripped off. I can't say...more
May 01, 2010
Relyn
rated it
1 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
nobody
Recommended to Relyn by:
one of my magazines - I'll never listen to them again
Shelves:
just-couldn-t-finish-it
This book - UGH! Of course, any book that starts out describing a variety of penises has got to be pretty horrible. It was. At first, the book was like a mystery I wanted to solve. Why on Earth would a major magazine like Oprah (I think that was the one.) recommend such a book? I'm thinking, "Surely the rest is better. Surely the start was a fluke." Nope, it wasn't. Aside for the unappealing (that's an understatement) subject matter, the writing really wasn't very good. I finally had to just sto...more
"What happened? How did she lose her job?"
"Ah, this guy came into the deli and asked if they sold half a grapefruit. Lacey told the guy they didn't sell grapefruit halves, only whole ones. But this guy was very persistent and didn't believe her, and insisted she go and ask the manager. So she went into the back room, not realizing the customer was following her. And she yelled, 'Hey, Eddie, some asshole out there wants to buy half a grapefruit.' And then suddenly she realized that the customer w...more
"Ah, this guy came into the deli and asked if they sold half a grapefruit. Lacey told the guy they didn't sell grapefruit halves, only whole ones. But this guy was very persistent and didn't believe her, and insisted she go and ask the manager. So she went into the back room, not realizing the customer was following her. And she yelled, 'Hey, Eddie, some asshole out there wants to buy half a grapefruit.' And then suddenly she realized that the customer w...more
As a teenager I was a little obsessed with the idea of American artists living in lofts in New York, so this collection of short stories really appealed to me.
I've not read it since but I have overwhelming memories of being irritated to hell by the character Eleanor, a hat designer who appears in several of the stories. She's an annoying drip stuck in a relationship with a selfish artist boyfriend who treats her like crap. I couldn't understand why she stayed with him. Not entirely sure if I'd...more
I've not read it since but I have overwhelming memories of being irritated to hell by the character Eleanor, a hat designer who appears in several of the stories. She's an annoying drip stuck in a relationship with a selfish artist boyfriend who treats her like crap. I couldn't understand why she stayed with him. Not entirely sure if I'd...more
Terribly overrated.
I love short story books where the stories connect with each other. I've only read one other and that was "Adverbs" by David Handler. This one does the same thing, though it has a few short stories that are unrelated. They're sort of serial, but basically they all tell of the life and thoughts of people in the avante garde art scene in the 80's. I like how the author picked characters that were on the fringe of the scene, not ones that were completely submersed in it. In that same vein, I had a...more
Just finished it. So I'm 20 years after the fact. Sue me.
Well, I liked it...but I'm sure that's at least partly a by-product of being old enough to remember New York in the 80s when artists (and junkies and drifters...sometimes combined in one body) could be found all over New York. It's a scattershot memoir of a time gone by; bittersweet for me. Hated the hair of the 80s; loved the experimentalism. The 80s took more chances than any decade of the century other than the 60s and, maybe, the 20s.
S...more
Well, I liked it...but I'm sure that's at least partly a by-product of being old enough to remember New York in the 80s when artists (and junkies and drifters...sometimes combined in one body) could be found all over New York. It's a scattershot memoir of a time gone by; bittersweet for me. Hated the hair of the 80s; loved the experimentalism. The 80s took more chances than any decade of the century other than the 60s and, maybe, the 20s.
S...more
"you and bruce" is my favorite. all of them are very shallow. at some points you can't tell whether the overt stupidity and mistrust of the reader comes from the narrator or the author. i don't recommend reading all of them - it's like eating so much ice cream that your mouth gets cold and you can't even taste anymore. when i finished the book i wanted to go sit in some dumb, lush romance novel where all the characters have feelings, banal though they may be.
The quintessence of the eighties can be found in this book, which caused a sensation then. It's still a delightful read, vividly written and quite insightful. New York glitters and fascinates, thanks to Janowit'z style. It's interesting how, now, already, this world somehow seems to belong to a lost era, giving to this book a kind of nostalgic patina that it didn't have at the time it was published. Janowitz beautifully writes about her city and makes you feel why it's such a unique, vibrant pla...more
Just OK -- not great. Janowitz was the toast of the town when this was published, but she hasn't really kept up her high profile. The "slaves" of whom she speaks are those who pay huge rents for small spaces in Manhattan, so boo hoo. Move. All in all, just can't muster up a lot of enthusiasm for this one.
Seeing this on a Goodreads' friend's shelf I remember reading this shortly after it came out and loving it. There was a spate of hip, New York novels coming out at the time, and this was definitely one of my favourites.
Well written story about the difficulties of living in Manhattan in the '80s. I certainly knew plenty of "slaves" when I was there. Janowitz's story and voice gives an accurate feeling of the spirit of the time and place.
Mar 21, 2011
Godzilla
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2011,
life-but-not-as-we-know-it
I had fonder memories of this that my re-reading discovered.
If ever there was a book of it's time, this may well be it.
The characters are shallow and neurotic, and the stories feel garbled and chaotic.
There are some sharply observed moments of satire in here, but it's really like panning for gold: the odd glimmer isn't going to totally enrich your life.
i found it a chore at times to finish reading it, and were it not for my OCD about finishing books I start, I may not have got through all this a...more
If ever there was a book of it's time, this may well be it.
The characters are shallow and neurotic, and the stories feel garbled and chaotic.
There are some sharply observed moments of satire in here, but it's really like panning for gold: the odd glimmer isn't going to totally enrich your life.
i found it a chore at times to finish reading it, and were it not for my OCD about finishing books I start, I may not have got through all this a...more
Aug 28, 2012
Erica
added it
This felt like something I would have read in my downtown new york class in college. It was more like an artifact than a book of short stories in terms of how I enjoyed it.
As the princess of the upper West Side and Brett's bedroom bunny I was expecting subliminal magic what did I get a teaspoon of mediocrity and then some .............
hysterical! Great satirical look at New York's art scene in a series of interconnected stories and characters. My fave: On and Off the African Veldt.
Think this is probably her best known book, and is appealing for short story readers or novel readers.
Glamorous and alien when I read it nearly 20 years ago. Some characters and situations still linger.
I remember I liked it at the time. The "time" being the winter of 1987.
It's so hip to knock her, or was before she vanished completely from the "cool radar" like the fat kid in the ball bin at Chucky Cheese. Wait, that was a REALLY mixed metaphor! I like her. A sort of I LOVE THE 80s cheesiness and camp. She's not deep not because she's not smart, but probably because she realized early on that the ideological war thing is just a bunch of kids throwing goop and shit at each other on the subway. She got more interested in how or why people survive...or don't. Sort o...more
You have to read the story about the nail salon!
i am character Eleanor about 80% of the time
One of my all time Favorites!!!
Feb 27, 2009
Mollie
marked it as wishlist
Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz (1986)
Nov 12, 2012
Sian Cancea
added it
Tama rocks my world.
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Tama Janowitz is an American novelist and a short story writer. The 2005 September/October issue of Pages magazine listed her as one of the four "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis, Mark Lindquist and Jay McInerney.
Born in San Francisco, California to a psychiatrist father and literature professor mother who divorced when she was ten, Janowitz moved to the East Coast of the United St...more
More about Tama Janowitz...
Born in San Francisco, California to a psychiatrist father and literature professor mother who divorced when she was ten, Janowitz moved to the East Coast of the United St...more
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“I don't like him...he makes me feel like he's going to throw me in a coffin and walk around on top of it.”
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1 person liked it
“...and it made me uncomfortable the way this guy was eating a scrawny chicken wing and looking at me. You know, I just wanted to tell him to knock it off and be a person.”
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1 person liked it
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you can tell i'm a big fan by my extensive knowledg...more
Mar 10, 2009 01:56pm
The title story so far is the best of the lot.
Aug 04, 2010 04:06pm
I actually forgot I'd written a "placeholder" review for this way back when, because I'd abandoned the book almost as soon as I wrote that. So,...more
Aug 05, 2010 04:44pm