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Published Sep 2017
272 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
From The New York Times best-selling author of Paris to the Moon and beloved New Yorker writer, a memoir that captures the romance of New York City in the 1980s.
When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young, the arty, and the ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life's consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder. At the Strangers' Gate builds a portrait of this particular moment in New York through the story of this couple's journey - from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family.
Gopnik transports us to his tiny basement room on the Upper East Side, and later to SoHo, where he captures a unicorn: an affordable New York loft. He takes us through his professional meanderings, from graduate student-cum-library-clerk to the corridors of Condé Nast and the galleries of MoMA. Between tender and humorous reminiscences, including affectionate portraits of Richard Avedon, Robert Hughes, and Jeff Koons, among many others, Gopnik discusses the ethics of ambition, the economy of creative capital, and the peculiar anthropology of art and aspiration in New York, then and now.
"Starred Review. Arabesque, captivating, self-deprecating, and affecting, Gopnik's cultural and intimate reflections, in league with those of Alfred Kazin and Joan Didion, are rich in surprising moments and delving perceptions into chance, creativity, character, style, conviction, hard work, and love." - Booklist
"Starred Review. As Gopnik writes, 'art traps time,' and with humor, affection, and the careful eye of a trained art historian, he offers an enjoyable and engaging story of New York at a very specific moment in history." - Library Journal
"Not exactly a Horatio Alger story but an engaging tale of a writer finding his way in work and life." - Kirkus
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Adam Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986. During his tenure at the magazine, he has written fiction and humor pieces, book reviews, profiles, reporting pieces, and more than a hundred stories for "The Talk of the Town" and "Comment."
His books, ranging from essay collections about Paris and food to children's novels, include Paris to the Moon (2000), The King in the Window (2005), Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York, (2006), Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (2009), The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food (2011), and Winter: Five Windows on the Season (2011).
Gopnik has won the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism three times, and also the George Polk Award for Magazine ...
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