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Everyone is Watching (2016)

by Megan Bradbury

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392635,815 (3.69)10
Beautiful, kaleidoscopic . . . everyone should be watching Megan Bradbury from now on' Eimear McBride, Baileys Prize-winning author of A Girl Is a Half-formed ThingNew York: A city that inspires. A city that draws people in. A city where everyone is watching, waiting to see what will happen next. 1967. Robert Mapplethorpe knows he is an artist. From his childhood home in Queens he yearns for the heat and excitement of the city, the press of other people's bodies. He wants to be watched, he wants to be known. 1891. Walt Whitman has already found fame, and has settled into his own sort of old age. Still childlike, still passionate, he travels with his friend and biographer Bucke to the city he has always adored, the scene of his greatest triumphs and rejections.1922. Robert Moses is a man with a vision. Standing on the edge of Long Island he knows what it could become. Walking down a street in Brooklyn he sees its future. He is the man who will build modern New York.2013. Edmund White is back in New York. It's the city of his youth, of his life and loves. He remembers days of lazy pleasure, nights of ecstasy and euphoria. But years have gone by since then. Everyone is Watching is a novel about the men and women who have defined New York. Through the lives and perspectives of these great creators, artists and thinkers, and through other iconic works of art that capture its essence, New York itself solidifies. Complex, rich, sordid, tantalizing, it is constantly changing and evolving. Both intimate and epic in its sweep, Everyone is Watching is a love letter to New York and its people - past, present and future.… (more)
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Everyone is Watching is purportedly a novel, but it really isn't. It's more like a series of little vignettes from the lives of famous New Yorkers such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Edmund White, Walt Whitman and Robert Moses. The idea seems to be that these little stories add up to telling the story of New York City. It's highly debatable that the book achieves that; there is a lot more to New York and its history than what Bradbury manages to convey here.

The novel has only the barest semblance of a plot, if any, and the line between fiction and fact is so blurred that the whole thing reads as non-fiction (even including footnotes at the end). Readers interested in this subject matter might do better to read the non-fictional The Lonely City which covers similar ground, only better. ( )
  gjky | Apr 9, 2023 |
A 'factional' novel where the author explores change in New York through the eyes of real people. Walt Whitman as he talks to his friend in the train going to New York in the 1890s. Robert Moses as he transforms the city with beaches and parks, pulling down houses and constructing a World's Fair. Robert Mapplethorpe photographs and sleeps his way through the 1960s and 70s art scene, and Edmund White mournfully considers the cleaned up, expensive 21st century city whilst remembering his youth cruising its dark corners. I began googling the works referenced through the book, descriptions of photographs of the city from slum dwellers in the late 19c to films depicting domestic violence. The author used these life stories and word pictures of modern art pieces to ask questions about the way the city changed in response to public works, and how this affected young people coming to the city after it was fashionable.
"Let's go back to the construction of Brooklyn Bridge, says Walt. I was there when the first support was laid in 1870, and I was there when the bridge was completed in 1883. As I walked across the bridge I thought of my humble printing press, what it did - I thought, It is the same, for both the bridge and the press allow ideas to move freely." ( )
1 vote charl08 | Jul 28, 2016 |
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The American writer Lydia Davis has compared her mini-stories to buildings, because like skyscrapers they are surrounded by an imposing blank space.
added by bergs47 | editThe Guardian, Miranda France (Jun 22, 2016)
 
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Longing on a large scale is what makes history
Don DeLillo, Underworld
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For Ben
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Robert Mapplethorpe rips out a page from the magazine and cuts around the guy's torso, leg and Dick. He sticks these parts onto paper. He lies in a dark room in Brooklyn. It is 1967.
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Beautiful, kaleidoscopic . . . everyone should be watching Megan Bradbury from now on' Eimear McBride, Baileys Prize-winning author of A Girl Is a Half-formed ThingNew York: A city that inspires. A city that draws people in. A city where everyone is watching, waiting to see what will happen next. 1967. Robert Mapplethorpe knows he is an artist. From his childhood home in Queens he yearns for the heat and excitement of the city, the press of other people's bodies. He wants to be watched, he wants to be known. 1891. Walt Whitman has already found fame, and has settled into his own sort of old age. Still childlike, still passionate, he travels with his friend and biographer Bucke to the city he has always adored, the scene of his greatest triumphs and rejections.1922. Robert Moses is a man with a vision. Standing on the edge of Long Island he knows what it could become. Walking down a street in Brooklyn he sees its future. He is the man who will build modern New York.2013. Edmund White is back in New York. It's the city of his youth, of his life and loves. He remembers days of lazy pleasure, nights of ecstasy and euphoria. But years have gone by since then. Everyone is Watching is a novel about the men and women who have defined New York. Through the lives and perspectives of these great creators, artists and thinkers, and through other iconic works of art that capture its essence, New York itself solidifies. Complex, rich, sordid, tantalizing, it is constantly changing and evolving. Both intimate and epic in its sweep, Everyone is Watching is a love letter to New York and its people - past, present and future.

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