Prologue: Urban Hermeneutics and the Problem of the Fetish Space PART I: MAPPINGS 1. The Paradigmatic Exceptionality of New York: Scaffolding a Radical Literary Urbanism 2. Downtown, Uptown, and the Urbanization of Literary Consciousness PART II: A NEW YORK TRILOGY INC. 3. Scale, Culture, and Real Estate: The Reproduction of Lowliness in Great Jones Street 4. Kill the Poor : Low-Rent Aesthetics and the New Housing Order 5. Uneven City: Brightness Falls and the Ethnography of Fictitious Finance Epilogue: The Politics of Urban Writing and the Hegemony of FIRE Bibliography

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.

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