That Great, Big Book about Bad, Old New York →

Some readers have pointed out that Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire could have been more tightly edited. Maybe so. I didn't have the sense, while reading it, that whole sections were crying out to be lopped off, but it's entirely possible that a tougher editor could find more fat to trim. The thing is, this book wants to be a sprawling, kaleidoscopic rollercoaster ride through a vanished cultural landscape — that of dirty, old 1970s New York City from before Rudy Giuliani shipped all the homeless people off somewhere and replaced the Times Square porn shops with a 50-foot-high painting of Cat in the Hat. It wants to be grand, unwieldy, immersive. It wants to sweep you up and shake you around for a while before letting you go.