i had a particularly hard time with this book because of this and because of reading it at the EXACT time that the cities in the world that mean most to me (Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia) were having extraordinary public conversations/demonstrations/ occasional riots about the identity and history of what it means for those cities even to HAVE identities. And that's just on a local scale -- at the same time it was MINNEAPOLIS that had begun driving nationwide conversation.

And, well, if this were a Rivers of London situation where EVERY city gets this, I would have loved to latch on to that mythology but i was so very not in the mood for New York exceptionalism -- even with everything I enjoyed about that book, which was a great deal. The Bronx/Bronca art gallery stuff, esp. THIS is a New York I believe in but haven't experienced, I cannot POSSIBLY internalize another pithy observation about Brooklyn, even with NKJ creating a great character to personify it.