Urban Space and Late Twentieth-Century New York Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Prologue: Urban Hermeneutics and the Problem of the Fetish Space

   1. Prologue: Urban Hermeneutics and the Problem of the Fetish Space

      • Catalina Neculai

      Pages 1-17

3. Mappings

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

      PDF

   2. The Paradigmatic Exceptionality of New York: Scaffolding a Radical Literary Urbanism

      • Catalina Neculai

      Pages 21-49

   3. Downtown, Uptown, and the Urbanization of Literary Consciousness

      • Catalina Neculai

      Pages 51-79

4. A New York Trilogy Inc.

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81

      PDF

   2. Scale, Culture, and Real Estate: The Reproduction of Lowliness in Great Jones Street

      • Catalina Neculai

      Pages 83-111

   3. Kill the Poor : Low-Rent Aesthetics and the New Housing Order

      • Catalina Neculai

      Pages 113-150

   4. Uneven City: Brightness Falls and the Ethnography of Fictitious Finance

      • Catalina Neculai

      Pages 151-189

   5. Epilogue: The Politics of Urban Writing and the Hegemony of FIRE

      • Catalina Neculai

      Pages 191-197

5. Back Matter

   Pages 199-240

   PDF

Interdisciplinary in nature, this project draws on fiction, non-fiction and archival material to theorize urban space and literary/cultural production in the context of the United States and New York City. Spanning from the mid-1970s fiscal crisis to the 1987 Market Crash, New York writing becomes akin to geographical fieldwork in this rich study.

• aesthetics
• crisis
• fiction
• New York
• space
• urbanism
• USA

“Urban Space and Late Twentieth-Century New York Literature proposes a new theoretical approach to literary geography by delving into writers’ responses to the uneven development of New York City, and it offers a thorough critique of literature written in the 1970s and 1980s. … It is definitely a useful tool for those who wish to explore the intersections of late twentieth-century New York fiction and non-fiction, archival material, urban, human, and cultural geography, and urban politics and history.” (Erika Mikó, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Vol. 22 (2), 2017)

Catalina Neculai is Lecturer in Academic Writing at the Centre for Academic Writing at Coventry University, UK.

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