The View from Apartment Four: On Loving and Leaving New York

by Skip Rozin

New York in the 1960s featured the Upper West Side as a diverse community, with free July Fourth fireworks, elite performances at Lincoln Center, and reasonably priced apartments and restaurants, albeit tainted by crime that inspired one Saul Bellow character to compare the neighborhood with Sodom and Gomorrah.Jump forward to the new millennium. While gentrification rendered those same streets safe, it also made housing too expensive for the working class and replaced dozens of pizza and barbecue favorites with fancy eateries and more sources of high-priced ice cream than anyone needs.This is the story of that change, viewed from a one-bedroom apartment, second floor front. And while the accompanying narrative is by the tenant, the author, it connects with all those others drawn to New York to prove themselves in that most competitive of environments—in the arts, fashion, business, and sports. Over time, they saw their situations change, and their priorities, putting their city lives in jeopardy.THE VIEW FROM APARTMENT FOUR presents an intimate picture of the impact of these changes on the author as he goes from being single to a married father of four, then joins those other New Yorkers forced to leave the city by taking on adult responsibilities avoided in our youth, all while pursuing his work-a-day career as a writer.

378 pages, Paperback

Published August 27, 2019

Reviews

[Kasa Cotugno]

All Skip Rozin ever wanted to do was make a living at writing, and to him, that meant writing fiction. But that wasn't to be his fate. What he has managed to do is carve out a living doing freelance for many respected magazines, including Audubon Magazine. He's also written some well received books on various aspects of sport, although it wasn't what he'd set out to do. But, as they say, life is what happens when you're making other plans, and now in his 70's, he's written his memoir, a virtual love letter to his upper west side (UWS in today's parlance) rent-controlled apartment that he held on to for 46 years before getting the dreaded eviction notice plastered to his door. Although I've never lived in New York, I've visited it enough times to be familiar with some of the idiosyncrasies such as alternate side of the street parking regulations. I've also found when in the City, it's easy to have short term friendships, a which Rozin identifies as being an urban phenomenon. The thing is, the issues he experienced in NYC are prevalent everywhere, most notably in cities that are almost unrecognizable from what they were 20 or 30 years ago. (I live in the Bay Area, so ... ). But he writes in a punchy style and generously shares his life with the reader.

[Tomi]

3.75*

[SundayAtDusk]

In the early 1960s, Skip Rozin travelled to Europe. He was a young man who wanted to be a great novelist, so going to Europe made perfect sense. Only, while there, he received his draft notice from Uncle Sam. Darn, what was an aspiring novelist, who knew he’d be killed as a soldier, to do? He finally decided to come back home, but fortunately was never sent to Vietnam. Instead, he made a home on a block of 77th Street in Apartment #4 in New York City. Isn’t New York the only other place a novelist belonged?

For over 40 years, Mr. Rozin was able to keep that apartment and pay really cheap rent. Even when he actually didn’t live there any longer, he still kept it and paid really cheap rent. Then, when the apartment building was sold, he was kicked out, and the new tenants who got his apartment had to pay really expensive rent. Getting kicked out comes much, much later in the story, however. The time period between the day he moved in to the day he moved out is what this memoir concentrates on . . . .

Skip Rozin discovered writing fiction was not going to pay the rent, or buy him food, or possibly even buy him a newspaper. Hence, he turned to nonfiction and describes in this book what it was like to be a nonfiction writer, an introvert who loved living alone in his little apartment, a man who mostly saw the good in New York City. In his forties, however, he began to wonder if a single, self-centered life was the best way to live, and ended up getting married. Within only a few years after marriage, he had not one, not two, not three, but four kids!

The memoir then focuses on what it is like to go from being a single, introverted writer to being a husband and father to an older daughter and triplets. Next came moving to Cape Cod, but still holding on to Apartment #4 and New York City. Then came being in a dying marriage, but still holding on to that marriage until the triplets were older. Finally, the divorce happens, the kids are grown, and Apartment #4 is taken away. At the end of the memoir is much reflection on life in New York as it was in the past; on life in Cape Cod; on the importance of the writings you leave behind and the children you leave behind; on being a single, introverted writer, no longer able to go home to Apartment #4 on a block of 77th Street in New York City.

(Note: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley and the author or publisher.)

[Astrid Galactic]

The View From Apartment Four: On Loving and Leaving New York by Skip Rozin is a pleasant enough book, especially if a piece of your heart has a place in NYC; however, it's not as New York centric as its title would lead one to believe. Yes, it centers around the author's time as a tenet in this specific apartment in NYC, but the reader ends up feeling as though they missed a bit of the city during his autobiographical storytelling as he tells more about his life during those years rather than a lifetime's worth of explorations and nuances of the heart and soul of NYC. There certainly is some of that but not as much as one might hope for.

We get to know exactly where the apartment is and the feel of its place within the building and neighborhood. We also get a little bit of an idea of some of the other residents within the building. We also get to know more about Skip, his desires and frustrations of becoming a writer in NYC. Eventually, a wife and kids enter the picture which has its own drama. The apartment has its part to play in the story but less and less of it actually involves NYC as the story is told. Still important but getting lost along the way.

The pieces I liked best were when I got the feeling that I just happened to meet Skip in some NYC café where we struck up a conversation with each other and I learned that he was a writer with things to say. Once we drained our coffee cups, we decided to move on to get a drink in some local watering hole where he continues to regale me with stories of his quest to have his stories published while writing in his uptown apartment. Strolling along, peeking in shop windows and discussing tidbits about some of the buildings and areas we pass by, we reach the subway to go our separate ways and thank each other for a wonderful evening of many in the city that never sleeps. That flavor of NYC is what sometimes made this an enjoyable read. Unfortunately, there weren't enough of these. Maybe it was the title that had me expecting more.

The one section I could have done without was when he elaborated on being a sports writer. Of course, I don't care for sports, so that left me cold, but it left me feeling that it didn't really belong. At least, not as detailed as it was.

As mentioned, it was an enjoyable enough book but not quite the thrill that I was hoping for.


Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of the eBook for a fair and honest review.

[Susan]

I did not have the stomach to finish this book. There’s a saying about New York: “It’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.” New York is not as unique in making connections and having a couple of degrees of separation, nor is it unique in random celebrity sitings: I met Richard Dreyfuss in a bookstore in DC. A late friend of mine, who, until she moved to New York and immediately adopted the New York persona, was a wide-eyed innocent from Nebraska. She drank the kool-aid, and once, when visiting me in Tucson, had the temerity to pronounce this lovely place a “backwater” - a place devoid of culture that meets the New Yorker’s high standards.

Reading this book was an unpleasant experience. I fell the author was full of himself and I stopped reading after two chapters because despite his belief in his talent, all I saw was someone enthralled by the fact that he’d made it to New York.

[Lisa]

This is a book about New York; life in New York in a single apartment for over 40 years. Of course, the story spills out from the apartment but it all centers around the West 77th Street, second floor front apartment. It’s about a writer, a father, a friend, a husband and a little bit of a recluse. I throughly enjoyed seeing New York through the author’s eyes. The story was one of life- ups, downs, happy times, change, love and friendship. I recommend it!

[Maureen]

I thought this was going to be more about New York in its heyday. It's much more of a memoir than I realized and the author doesn't really seem to connect with life in NYC. It was also repetitive but maybe because it's stories that are strung together. I didn't get a real feel for the author or the city.