Adam Gopnik

For anyone who loves reading the daily-life-of-a-foreigner-transplanted books, this one is a superior treat. For a start, Gopnik writes really well, both elegantly and with great humour. He was the Paris correspondent for New Yorker magazine for the five years covered in this book. What sets it apart is his ability to weigh and measure his own prejudices and cultural biases, and, whilst not always wholeheartedly agreeing with the Parisian approach and attitude, he never condemns.
The essays show more appeared originally in "New Yorker", so if you are a fan you will be pleased to see them in collected form. If, like me, you have never read them before the insightful observations and intelligent writing will capture you. The book seems to be ordered chrnologically, and at the end of each section is a 'Christmas diary' with observations and 'lessons learned' from the previous year.

I was particularly attracted to this book because of the promise of some insight into living life in an adopted city with a young child. This promise is delivered and provides a delightfully different insight than that offered by a Mayle or Mayes (well off later-life part-time emigres). show less

If you can get past wishing you had lived Adam Gopnik’s life back in the ‘80s, then you’ll find this account of his first decade in New York City to be charmingly insightful and wistfully wise. Of course there is more to tell. There always is. Young men don’t just happen to fall in love in Montreal with the most beautiful woman in the world, woo her, and then head to New York City to make a life together. That sounds a bit too much like a Broadway show. Gopnik’s life has that air show more about it. Whether it is his lunch-hour lectures at the MoMA or his copy-editing at GQ or his fast friendships with men like Richard Avedon, it’s all just too much. Or just enough.

By this point in his career, Gopnik’s writing style is largely set. So if you’ve read any of his earlier works, you’ll have a sense of what to expect here. There are smatterings of art history, a touch of style both culinary and cloth, the worked image reworked and tooled until it gets him some kind of product, though not always the one he is aiming at, the rueful glance in the mirror, and the boyish — I was going to write “old-fashioned” — asides and interruptions that both undercut and push forward a leading image. Here, I especially like the chapter on his first, sort of, job at GQ and the next on his remarkable friendship with Richard Avedon. Sometimes he overreaches, as in the lengthy chapter on SoHo in which he attempts to tie together real estate, the art market, art criticism, and uxoriousness. However even here there is much to learn. Perhaps another decade will provide Gopnik sufficient distance to both see all of the contradictions clearly and be able to communicate same.

The writing throughout is well-crafted. And at times surprisingly good. You’ll find this a reliable read even if all you come away with is the desire to have lived Adam Gopnik’s life back in the ‘80s. show less

My kind of book, the one that mixes humour with stories of life and the art scene, the most beautiful cities in the world (New York and Paris). If I could invite anyone for dinner and I'd know what to TL about that's barely interesting, Gopnik would be my choice. His wife will be someone I'll never forget, with her beauty and habit of sleeping days on end, her Nordic heritage. Also I'll never forget what his father told Gopnik when he left homely Montreal for New York:

Never underestimate the show more insecurity of the other person.

How many times must I have told my friends the story about walking "naked from the waist down" through New York. And me losing a dear hat just while reading this in a team and rejoicing, only to cry afterwards. I always gather my friends' stories of dear Items lost, with this. Plus, Gopnik was good friends with one of the genius photographers of our era: Richard Avedon. He was like a father to him.

Gopnik sounds a lot like Sedaris, by the way.

I'm writing this from Genève Airport. show less

Intelligent and thoughtful essays on the big and little questions surrounding food. I always enjoy Gopnik's prose, and this book is no exception -- even if, unlike some of his other works, I feel like I should reread certain sections to try to get concepts I couldn't quite grasp the first time. I also found the subtitle a little misleading; it made me expect more of a personal memoir, along the lines of his earlier "Paris to the Moon" or "Through the Children's Gate", and his musings on show more various food movements and the meanings of taste far outnumber his thoughts on France or family. Still worth the read, though, for people who like to think about, talk and of course eat food. show less