The Heart of the World

By Nik Cohn

Book Overview

The history of Broadway has been written before, but never better. . . . The verbal energy that pours off these pages is enough to transform the hell of...Times Square into a rough-hewn heaven, neon lit and open all night. . . . The only thing wrong with this book is it isn't longer. --Newsweek

Nik Cohn ushers readers along the street he calls The Heart of the World. producing a book that is a resplendent pageant of New York's high--and low--life. Among the characters we meet are a golden-tongued cab driver who calls himself a collector of farces; a pickpocket with the terrifying gift of impersonating his marks; a heartbreakingly beautiful Dominican transvestite named Lush Life; strippers; pseudo-prophets; and a disgraced political veteran of the days when the graft was still honest. Conducted by a writer with the manic energy of a sideshow barker and the full-blooded lyricism of a raucous poet, this is a bebop odyssey along the Great White Way that reaches in implication far beyond the streets of New York to document the ever-evolving mixtures that make up America itself.

A lovely, bracing book, full to bursting with juicy, tasty, rancid life. While making its bawdy way through crowded spaces . . . it also travels through modern times . . . wondrous. --USA TODAY

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679744371
• ISBN13: 9780679744375
• Release Date: March 1993
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 380 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Strangely magnetic...like a car wreck, you can't look away

Everybody has a sad story, and it seems like Nik Cohn went and found them all. This book does the unique...it puts a name and a story with each of those faces you see on your way to work. There's Sasha Zim...who in a few statements sums up the feeling of the book...New York is a hellpit, but it's my hellpit. Not a happy book in the traditional sense, going into it with the wrong mindframe might leave you in a somewhat sour mood. At times dour, at times saddening, at times depressing--you know that these are real people. Cohn brings out the best in these people. Combined with an awesome ability to paint an image, Cohn characterizes each person to the point that they couldn't have told the story better themselves. The characterizations, though, are at times a little too perfect...mostly good, I did roll my eyes a couple of times. Cohn packs as much meaning into a phrase as is humanly possible. I've not read a person who can turn a phrase like Mr. Cohn. However, it is NOT a quick read. Set aside a long period of time...read it in little bits and digest it. The scope of the tale, like its subject, is just too broad to consume in one sitting.