Modernism in the streets: a life and times in essays

Description

Part six. Signs in the street. Signs in the street -- Underground man -- Broadway, love, and theft -- "Justice / just us.";Part five. The bright book of life. The Jewish patient (Franz Kafka) -- Waiting for the barbarians (Issac Babel) -- In the night kitchen (Alfred Kazin) -- The bright book of life (Orhan Pamuk).;"Essays tracing the intellectual life of a quintessential New York City writer and thinker Marshall Berman was one of the great urbanists and Marxist cultural critics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and his brilliant, nearly sui generis book All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a masterpiece of the literature on modernism. But like many New York intellectuals, the essay was his characteristic form, accommodating his multifarious interests and expressing his protean, searching exuberant mind. This collection includes early essays from and on the radical '60s, on New York City, on literary figures from Kafka to Pamuk, and late essays on rock, hip hop, and gentrification. Concluding with his last essay, completed just before his death in 2013, this book is Berman's intellectual autobiography, tracing his career as a thinker through the way he read the "signs in the street.""--;Part two. Radical times. The politics of authenticity -- Alienation, community, freedom -- Notes toward a new society -- Unchained melody.;Part four. Jay talking. The dancer and the dance (Karl Marx) -- Still waiting at the station (Edmund Wilson) -- Angel in the city (Walter Benjamin) -- Cosmic chutzpah (Georg Likács).;Part three. Living for the city. Take it to the streets -- Buildings are judgment, or "what man can build" -- Views from the burning bridge -- New York calling.;Part seven. The romance of public space. Introduction / Shellie Sclan -- The romance of public space -- The bible and public space. Part two. Radical times. The politics of authenticity -- Alienation, community, freedom -- Notes toward a new society -- Unchained melody. Part three. Living for the city. Take it to the streets -- Buildings are judgment, or "what man can build" -- Views from the burning bridge -- New York calling. Part four. Jay talking. The dancer and the dance (Karl Marx) -- Still waiting at the station (Edmund Wilson) -- Angel in the city (Walter Benjamin) -- Cosmic chutzpah (Georg Likács). Part five. The bright book of life. The Jewish patient (Franz Kafka) -- Waiting for the barbarians (Issac Babel) -- In the night kitchen (Alfred Kazin) -- The bright book of life (Orhan Pamuk). Part six. Signs in the street. Signs in the street -- Underground man -- Broadway, love, and theft -- "Justice / just us." Part seven. The romance of public space. Introduction / Shellie Sclan -- The romance of public space -- The bible and public space.