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.
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