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A Walker in the City
This work is a collection of columns published by Peter Anastas mostly between 1978 and 1990, with a few published later. The collection includes an introduction by Benjamin Anastas and an afterword by Ammiel Alcalay, editor of Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. The columns cover topics of interest to Gloucester and its residents at the time, including the consequences of urban renewal, the future of Gloucester as a great seaport, the sense of identity growing up in a blue-collar town, and the like.
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
4 people want to read
About the author
Peter Anastas
13 books1 followerPeter Anastas (1937-) is an American author of novels, memoirs, and non-fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 24, 2017
This collection of newspaper columns by Peter Anastas capture a period of transition in the history of Gloucester, the oldest seaport in the United States, located on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Anastas grew up in Gloucester, along the Cut, as it is called, and knows its history intimately and in detail. He is devoted to preserving the culture and life of Gloucester as a fishing community and as a place where those who engage in blue-collar work are appreciated and supported in their endeavors. This is becoming almost impossible in the United States of today, and reading these columns reminds readers of the change in our history that has lessened our understanding and appreciation of those who labor for a living.
The columns take us deep into Gloucester and its history, its current battles over preservation versus development, its many colorful figures who have loved the city, and its ongoing problems as a growing city with challenges and crises.
This is a rare chance to go into a world rarely open to outsiders, the result of Anastas's precise and deeply felt caring for his city. These columns may be short, barely 600 words in most cases, but they capture a moment and a life that could be lost forever.
The columns take us deep into Gloucester and its history, its current battles over preservation versus development, its many colorful figures who have loved the city, and its ongoing problems as a growing city with challenges and crises.
This is a rare chance to go into a world rarely open to outsiders, the result of Anastas's precise and deeply felt caring for his city. These columns may be short, barely 600 words in most cases, but they capture a moment and a life that could be lost forever.
June 6, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyed these essays that are pure nostalgia, a sweet immersion to Gloucester, MA! Also really appreciated Anastas’ reflections on community-building and urban development!
August 24, 2015
Peter Anastas had the great good fortune to be writing for the Gloucester Daily Times in the last decades of the golden age of American journalism- when what appeared in print could define- and remake- the political, social and cultural history of the nation. Everyone read newspapers, and what appeared in print could make or break a life, a reputation or a community.
And to the extent that a small city newspaper could make a difference in the lives of its community, the GDT, as it was known, did just that, guided by the inspired- and often daring- editorial hand of Peter Watson- an editor who could have gone anywhere, but who chose to devote his life to Cape Ann, on the North Shore of Massachusetts, where Gloucester was the grand old fishing seaport and its satellite communities on the Cape were the GDT’s devoted readership.
During that era, say from the early 1970s through to the end of the century, the GDT won prize after prize for its journalism, and it was like a finishing school for journalists who went on to win national prizes while working for the country’s largest and most distinguished newspapers.
….And then there were the writers- reporters and columnists- who, like Peter Watson- ignored the temptation to leave for the big money elsewhere- staying instead in Gloucester to give their depth of knowledge, empathy and understanding of the community- and their talent- to writing about that one small city. Peter Anastas among them. A Gloucester native, over 12 years he wrote 620 columns for the GDT. Watson gave him free rein to write whatever seemed to matter to Anastas- and a lot mattered.
The result, years later, is A Walker in the City, this collection and compilation of the Anastas columns that form a portrait, written to the highest standards of journalism, and with the deepest possible understanding and dedication to his subject matter- anything and everyone in that one small city that
Anastas never left.
The careers of the GDT graduates who went on to write for bigger newspapers elsewhere also mattered. But it’s also true that A Walker in the City, in its inclusion, in the duration and dedication of its writer, over time- an entire lived life- to Gloucester- may be not only Anastas’ finest journalism, but also the lasting, most remembered and most valuable illumination, portrait, of that one small city in that era...
…And the best kind of lasting, living memorial in journalism to the writer and the editor who imagined and created that portrait.
And to the extent that a small city newspaper could make a difference in the lives of its community, the GDT, as it was known, did just that, guided by the inspired- and often daring- editorial hand of Peter Watson- an editor who could have gone anywhere, but who chose to devote his life to Cape Ann, on the North Shore of Massachusetts, where Gloucester was the grand old fishing seaport and its satellite communities on the Cape were the GDT’s devoted readership.
During that era, say from the early 1970s through to the end of the century, the GDT won prize after prize for its journalism, and it was like a finishing school for journalists who went on to win national prizes while working for the country’s largest and most distinguished newspapers.
….And then there were the writers- reporters and columnists- who, like Peter Watson- ignored the temptation to leave for the big money elsewhere- staying instead in Gloucester to give their depth of knowledge, empathy and understanding of the community- and their talent- to writing about that one small city. Peter Anastas among them. A Gloucester native, over 12 years he wrote 620 columns for the GDT. Watson gave him free rein to write whatever seemed to matter to Anastas- and a lot mattered.
The result, years later, is A Walker in the City, this collection and compilation of the Anastas columns that form a portrait, written to the highest standards of journalism, and with the deepest possible understanding and dedication to his subject matter- anything and everyone in that one small city that
Anastas never left.
The careers of the GDT graduates who went on to write for bigger newspapers elsewhere also mattered. But it’s also true that A Walker in the City, in its inclusion, in the duration and dedication of its writer, over time- an entire lived life- to Gloucester- may be not only Anastas’ finest journalism, but also the lasting, most remembered and most valuable illumination, portrait, of that one small city in that era...
…And the best kind of lasting, living memorial in journalism to the writer and the editor who imagined and created that portrait.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews