What We Talk About When We Talk About Cities

by Andy Merrifield

In often dreamlike peregrinations around his home towns of Liverpool, London and New York Andy Merrifield reflects on what cities mean to us and how they shape the way we think. As he wanders, Merrifield’s reveries circle Can we talk about cities in the absolute, discovering their essence beneath the particulars? Is it possible truly to love or hate a city, to experience it carnally or viscerally? Might we find true love in the city?

Merrifield does find love in the with his future wife, whom he takes on a date to see his hero Spalding Gray’s “It’s a Slippery Slope” at London’s South Bank and soon after moves in with, to a tiny place in Bloomsbury where they celebrate the brilliance of new romance by painting the walls turquoise and gold. And for the fellow urbanist Marshall Berman, another working class boy who went up to Oxford. Berman takes Merrifield under his wing and shows him the thrills available in Dostoevsky and Marx over cups of coffee in ordinary cafes on New York City’s Upper West Side.

The mood music to these love affairs is provided by a rich repertoire of intellects, from Jane Jacobs to Mike Davis, from Louis Malle to Walter Benjamin. John Lennon, a pupil, like Merrifield, at Quarry Bank school in Liverpool, enters the story; so too the novelist and critic John Berger. And providing tonality throughout is the stripped down, razor honed talk about love in the stories of Raymond Carver.

306 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 31, 2018

About the author

Andy Merrifield, British author and professor.

Reviews

[Geert Hofman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very personal book that is easy to relate to. The author sketches quite clearly how a city can invade, constitute and inspire your identity more than anything else. You feel "his city" (New York) come to live with al its ambivalence. The book is not always linear and meanders in and out of the main focus, but that makes it so alive. Not all passages are as interesting, but it certainly is worth reading, especially if you have a certain affinity to New York.

[Wil · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book included plenty of enjoyable anecdotes about New York and other cities, and I too find myself feeling lost in New York, considering leaving but also like I just got here. Plenty of good book recommendations and excerpts too (no shortage of lit review and new books to read next). But generally, I had a hard time finding a convincing enough narrative arc to really appreciate it.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

introspective and relatable. really captures that normadic feeling of trying to belong somewhere, that desperation to be a citizen of the world or to be find roots. Really enjoyed.

[Aynur Aslanova · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting this book to be more about emotions about cities. It feels like, this is a novel mixed up with emotional depictions here and there.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andy’s book is a love letter to cities, to love, to people, wanderers, lost ones, the downtrodden, the survivors. It’s as much an autobiography as it is a deeply emotive discussion of urban issues. Through it we are introduced to his favorite authors, academics, and intellectuals (some of whom become his friends), his wife, his family, and his cities. Liverpool. London. New York. And some noncity geographies, too. Although the book isn’t structured into chapters, it’s not a cumbersome read. Merrifield instead sucks you in to the urbanist’s dream of a chat, at once intellectual and sentimental, at a corner coffee shop (according to the book, no shame in that coffee shop being a Starbucks). I felt saddened, but deeply satisfied, when I finished it.