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New York in the '50s
The rhythms of jazz and beat poetry punctuate this sweeping, firsthand account of New York City’s 1950s literary scene from the Bowery to Spanish Harlem
National bestselling author Dan Wakefield first came to New York City in 1952 with the intention of receiving a proper literary education on the ivied campus of Columbia University. An equally enlightening experience, he quickly found, was hiding in the smoky bars and cafés of Greenwich Village frequented by the most talented writers of the fifties, including James Baldwin, Joan Didion, and Allen Ginsberg. Wakefield recounts drinking at the White Horse Tavern, Dylan Thomas’s Village haunt, as well as the offices of Esquire and the Nation, capturing rare, intimate moments of spirited camaraderie between some of the most influential artists of their generation.
Like Hemingway’s recollections of 1920s Paris in A Moveable Feast, New York in the ’50s showcases a city in its artistic heyday, replete with Wakefield’s remembrances of brushing shoulders with literary icons such as Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer, and watching Thelonious Monk play jazz at the Five Spot Café. Wakefield’s experience as a journalist and chronicler of Americana allows him to capture the subtleties of a decade of unparalleled artistic expression.
National bestselling author Dan Wakefield first came to New York City in 1952 with the intention of receiving a proper literary education on the ivied campus of Columbia University. An equally enlightening experience, he quickly found, was hiding in the smoky bars and cafés of Greenwich Village frequented by the most talented writers of the fifties, including James Baldwin, Joan Didion, and Allen Ginsberg. Wakefield recounts drinking at the White Horse Tavern, Dylan Thomas’s Village haunt, as well as the offices of Esquire and the Nation, capturing rare, intimate moments of spirited camaraderie between some of the most influential artists of their generation.
Like Hemingway’s recollections of 1920s Paris in A Moveable Feast, New York in the ’50s showcases a city in its artistic heyday, replete with Wakefield’s remembrances of brushing shoulders with literary icons such as Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer, and watching Thelonious Monk play jazz at the Five Spot Café. Wakefield’s experience as a journalist and chronicler of Americana allows him to capture the subtleties of a decade of unparalleled artistic expression.
514 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
April 19, 2022
I approached this book with some trepidation. Some people are New York people. Some people -- myself included -- just aren't. I've been to the Big Apple two or three times. In 1965, I cornered Haig Manoogian of New York University about joining their film department. He discouraged me, probably because he was into film production, not history and criticism as I was.
Dan Wakefield's New York in the 50's, however, drew me in. It does look as if The City was THE place to be in the 1950s. By the time I visited it, something was missing. In many ways, the book should have been called My New York in the Fifties, because the book is more autobiographical than historical. It seems that Wakefield knew everybody, from the Beatniks to Joan Didion to Norman Mailer and so on ad infinitum.
In the end, I enjoyed the book and was grateful for the detailed index, as I would like to read several of the books mentioned.
Dan Wakefield's New York in the 50's, however, drew me in. It does look as if The City was THE place to be in the 1950s. By the time I visited it, something was missing. In many ways, the book should have been called My New York in the Fifties, because the book is more autobiographical than historical. It seems that Wakefield knew everybody, from the Beatniks to Joan Didion to Norman Mailer and so on ad infinitum.
In the end, I enjoyed the book and was grateful for the detailed index, as I would like to read several of the books mentioned.
February 23, 2013
I know folks who move to New York and liked it have a certain haughtiness about the city, but Wakefield is over the top. If you became an adult in the 1950s and didn't move to New York, you had no guts or no brains or neither. (Hope that's correct grammar). In fact, the first chapter largely consists of quoting people who moved there, how they got their, and their idea that it was the only reasonable thing for an intelligent person to do.
Is there a word that's the equivalent of hagiography, but for a place instead of a person? That's what I'm thinking.
As far as the content itself, Wakefield says in the introduction that the book started as a memoir and eventually morphed into a book about New York in the 1950s. Uh oh. I don't think he did enough work in de-memoir-izing it. You need to do more than talk about a recent interview with Mailer to make it a full fledged history. A book about roughly 8 years of Dan Wakefield's life? Usually, you need to be someone of much greater stature to have a book cover only a small slice of your life. Say, William S. Burroughs: The Sixteen Months He Lived in New Orleans.
At least he had more bad things than good to say about psychoanalysis. There is hope.
Is there a word that's the equivalent of hagiography, but for a place instead of a person? That's what I'm thinking.
As far as the content itself, Wakefield says in the introduction that the book started as a memoir and eventually morphed into a book about New York in the 1950s. Uh oh. I don't think he did enough work in de-memoir-izing it. You need to do more than talk about a recent interview with Mailer to make it a full fledged history. A book about roughly 8 years of Dan Wakefield's life? Usually, you need to be someone of much greater stature to have a book cover only a small slice of your life. Say, William S. Burroughs: The Sixteen Months He Lived in New Orleans.
At least he had more bad things than good to say about psychoanalysis. There is hope.
May 14, 2015
I felt like this book was all about Dan Wakefield bragging about whom he knew, how cool he was during that age and how his views were completely justified. I will admit the 50's time period have never interested me. There was parts of the book that sparked my interest and will look into some more - Dorothy Day, the Joe McCarthy scandal and the time he covered the race murder in Mississippi.
May 28, 2022
A more accurate title for this book would be something like “My Life in New York’s Literary Scene in the ’50s.” It’s a personal memoir of the decade that Wakefield spent in New York City beginning with his move from Indiana to attend Columbia University in 1952. He lived in various parts of Manhattan, but he identified most with Greenwich Village, where he immersed himself in the world of writers, artists, musicians, and other “Bohemian” types.
It seems that he knew or at least met almost everyone who was a part of New York’s literary world, along with many artists and musicians. The book is full of stories about those people, many of whose names were well-known then or became well-known later. Just to name a few (he names lots): James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Harrington, Murray Kempton, Jack Kerouac, Seymour Krim, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, C. Wright Mills, Gay Talese, Lionel Trilling.
Although the book is based on Wakefield’s personal experiences in the 1950s, he enhanced the narrative by adding the perspective of time after conducting numerous interviews in the early 1990s. Looking back, he saw his time in New York as something of a Golden Age for young writers and artists, comparable to Paris in the 1920s. In the 1950s, Wakefield and his friends were told, and believed, that if you wanted to write, you had to live in New York.
The book really resonated with me. Although I’m almost 20 years younger than Wakefield, I admired many of the writers he talks about, and I nurtured some of the same romantic notions of New York as the center of writing, publishing, and the arts. I never did end up living in New York, although I did work in publishing for a while just outside the city. After classes at the New School and NYU, I spent evenings at Bradley’s and the Cedar Tavern—although, as Wakefield says, those were artists’ bars; the writers did most of their (prodigious) drinking at the White Horse Tavern and Chumley’s. But in any event, by the time I was hanging out in the Village, Wakefield’s crowd and that scene were long gone.
The book may not be for everyone, but If you have any interest in literary history, the history of New York City, or American life in the 1950s, I think you would enjoy it. Wakefield is a very good writer. Even though I was a child in the ’50s, he made me nostalgic for the time and place he describes.
It seems that he knew or at least met almost everyone who was a part of New York’s literary world, along with many artists and musicians. The book is full of stories about those people, many of whose names were well-known then or became well-known later. Just to name a few (he names lots): James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Harrington, Murray Kempton, Jack Kerouac, Seymour Krim, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, C. Wright Mills, Gay Talese, Lionel Trilling.
Although the book is based on Wakefield’s personal experiences in the 1950s, he enhanced the narrative by adding the perspective of time after conducting numerous interviews in the early 1990s. Looking back, he saw his time in New York as something of a Golden Age for young writers and artists, comparable to Paris in the 1920s. In the 1950s, Wakefield and his friends were told, and believed, that if you wanted to write, you had to live in New York.
The book really resonated with me. Although I’m almost 20 years younger than Wakefield, I admired many of the writers he talks about, and I nurtured some of the same romantic notions of New York as the center of writing, publishing, and the arts. I never did end up living in New York, although I did work in publishing for a while just outside the city. After classes at the New School and NYU, I spent evenings at Bradley’s and the Cedar Tavern—although, as Wakefield says, those were artists’ bars; the writers did most of their (prodigious) drinking at the White Horse Tavern and Chumley’s. But in any event, by the time I was hanging out in the Village, Wakefield’s crowd and that scene were long gone.
The book may not be for everyone, but If you have any interest in literary history, the history of New York City, or American life in the 1950s, I think you would enjoy it. Wakefield is a very good writer. Even though I was a child in the ’50s, he made me nostalgic for the time and place he describes.
August 30, 2017
New York in the Fifties by Dan Wakefield was written in 1992, based on recollection and interviews with what mostly writers and artists who lived in NY during that era. Wakefield came to NYC to go to Columbia University in the 1950s from Indiana. He is older than me, but we shared some of the same spaces but decades apart. It is interesting to read about this middle–class White male coming to NYC in the 1950s and thinking about himself as a writer and studying at Columbia with major figures at the time. The post college years are much like my college years, living with roommates in tight quarters, but he was living by the pen, writing articles for papers and magazines to pay the bills.
Wakefield lived in the East and West Village, while I grew up in the 1950s on St. Marks Place. Thus seeing that neighborhood through the eyes of a young adult was interesting. I experienced it as an elementary school student. I’d return to the area in high school and college, but I was never part of the drinking scene that seems to stamp many writers of Wakefield’s era. I also lived in the shadow of Columbia, so that was also familiar territory, but I never felt like an insider at the West End, a bar that was part of the neighborhood. So many of the spaces Wakefield occupied were predominantly male, as well as White. They do make for interesting stories and has a solid feel of community, as people gathered in the same establishments and went to other upscale places to acknowledge achievements. As working-class college students, our parties were never as special, but we also did not drink as much as his group did in their twenties. Paid employment was a major part of our lives as students.
What was interesting is this aspiration to be a novelist, non-fiction journalism was not as valued, but we have seen shifts over time. Perhaps it was just the middle-class up bring that you needed as aspiration/career plan. More a male objective at that time, but Wakefield did notice that women were not taken as seriously. In that time, they might not have been as forceful, but following behind, women in my cohort were a bit more career oriented, but I think my orientation was more from my working class roots and knowing that I’d have to support myself. I was going to be a teacher, but the site of teaching changed from high school to university with the encouragement of college professors.
Wakefield did help me grasp this need to be a writer. I did not have that bud, which I thought came from having someone else support you. Settling on sociology and the writing in the discipline was fine for me. I did know young women in high school and college who had more of the “need” to be a writer or an artist of some sort. I needed to work and the occupation called for writing and I could do that. Wakefield’s comments about analysis in the 1950s were interesting, but again more middle-class in the attitude of spending years discovering who you are and what you are to do. Such expectations must come with money, someone’s money.
Wakefield learns much from his interviews with people from his past and other writers and artists, including musicians who spent the 1950s in NYC. He became aware of the gender differences that he did not pick up on in the 1950s. As I was coming of age the movements were happening: civil rights, anti-war, and the gender revolution. Reading about the shifting views on sex was also a plus, since the revolution was in swing as I was coming of age. Yet, my life was more directed by external factors. College was in NYC, since I was a commuter student, which was all I could afford. Graduate school took me out of NYC, but that was the best financial package. And then jobs have taken me around the nation, while Wakefield was making more of the decisions on where he wanted to live.
Having always been inclined to a regular paycheck, I found his experiences of living by the pen interesting. Yet, it did take him to interesting places. However, I did feel he had racial and gender privileges that were invisible to him, since most of the editors and connections were also White men. He does attend to the larger political scene, but in the interviews the end of the fifties was signified in a range of ways. Wakefield knew and admired James Baldwin, but his own inattention to social structure meant he did not really recognize oppression, instead for Wakefield everyone had pain. Yet, race is always in the background. One interesting comment was from musician who thought the progress that musicians made in the 1950s was forgotten when people were worshiping the Beatles and all the White bands that came in their wake, of course appropriating Black music.
An interesting read and of course he does get out of NYC and analysis, essential for his own development. I also leave NYC, but having grown up in it I think my attitude was very different. Wakefield was dealing with the NYC in decline in the early 1990s, but the NYC in the 21st century is hard to find a place to even live.
Wakefield lived in the East and West Village, while I grew up in the 1950s on St. Marks Place. Thus seeing that neighborhood through the eyes of a young adult was interesting. I experienced it as an elementary school student. I’d return to the area in high school and college, but I was never part of the drinking scene that seems to stamp many writers of Wakefield’s era. I also lived in the shadow of Columbia, so that was also familiar territory, but I never felt like an insider at the West End, a bar that was part of the neighborhood. So many of the spaces Wakefield occupied were predominantly male, as well as White. They do make for interesting stories and has a solid feel of community, as people gathered in the same establishments and went to other upscale places to acknowledge achievements. As working-class college students, our parties were never as special, but we also did not drink as much as his group did in their twenties. Paid employment was a major part of our lives as students.
What was interesting is this aspiration to be a novelist, non-fiction journalism was not as valued, but we have seen shifts over time. Perhaps it was just the middle-class up bring that you needed as aspiration/career plan. More a male objective at that time, but Wakefield did notice that women were not taken as seriously. In that time, they might not have been as forceful, but following behind, women in my cohort were a bit more career oriented, but I think my orientation was more from my working class roots and knowing that I’d have to support myself. I was going to be a teacher, but the site of teaching changed from high school to university with the encouragement of college professors.
Wakefield did help me grasp this need to be a writer. I did not have that bud, which I thought came from having someone else support you. Settling on sociology and the writing in the discipline was fine for me. I did know young women in high school and college who had more of the “need” to be a writer or an artist of some sort. I needed to work and the occupation called for writing and I could do that. Wakefield’s comments about analysis in the 1950s were interesting, but again more middle-class in the attitude of spending years discovering who you are and what you are to do. Such expectations must come with money, someone’s money.
Wakefield learns much from his interviews with people from his past and other writers and artists, including musicians who spent the 1950s in NYC. He became aware of the gender differences that he did not pick up on in the 1950s. As I was coming of age the movements were happening: civil rights, anti-war, and the gender revolution. Reading about the shifting views on sex was also a plus, since the revolution was in swing as I was coming of age. Yet, my life was more directed by external factors. College was in NYC, since I was a commuter student, which was all I could afford. Graduate school took me out of NYC, but that was the best financial package. And then jobs have taken me around the nation, while Wakefield was making more of the decisions on where he wanted to live.
Having always been inclined to a regular paycheck, I found his experiences of living by the pen interesting. Yet, it did take him to interesting places. However, I did feel he had racial and gender privileges that were invisible to him, since most of the editors and connections were also White men. He does attend to the larger political scene, but in the interviews the end of the fifties was signified in a range of ways. Wakefield knew and admired James Baldwin, but his own inattention to social structure meant he did not really recognize oppression, instead for Wakefield everyone had pain. Yet, race is always in the background. One interesting comment was from musician who thought the progress that musicians made in the 1950s was forgotten when people were worshiping the Beatles and all the White bands that came in their wake, of course appropriating Black music.
An interesting read and of course he does get out of NYC and analysis, essential for his own development. I also leave NYC, but having grown up in it I think my attitude was very different. Wakefield was dealing with the NYC in decline in the early 1990s, but the NYC in the 21st century is hard to find a place to even live.
June 26, 2019
Dan Wakefield arrived at Columbia University in 1952 as a fresh-faced, corn-fed undergraduate. After a couple of years worshiping wide-eyed at the feet of his professors — Mark van Doren, Lionel Trilling, and C. Wright Mills — he graduated to worshiping wide-eyed at the feet of the Village literary scene, rubbing elbows with the likes of James Baldwin, Murray Kempton, Norman Mailer, and Jack Kerouac.
This tiresome memoir is Wakefield’s rosy-eyed love letter to an era about which so many far more astute observers have written. is made even more tedious by both endless name-dropping and mediocre writing that is utterly devoid of any insight; I lost count of how many times I sprained my eyes rolling them. Wakefield’s “gee-whiz” white-boy cluelessness might have had its appeal among his fellow journalists in the 50s; in looking back on it 40 years later, one might hope Wakefield might have acquired some perspective. Alas. Put the Wakefield down, pick up Mary McCarthy instead, and never look back.
This tiresome memoir is Wakefield’s rosy-eyed love letter to an era about which so many far more astute observers have written. is made even more tedious by both endless name-dropping and mediocre writing that is utterly devoid of any insight; I lost count of how many times I sprained my eyes rolling them. Wakefield’s “gee-whiz” white-boy cluelessness might have had its appeal among his fellow journalists in the 50s; in looking back on it 40 years later, one might hope Wakefield might have acquired some perspective. Alas. Put the Wakefield down, pick up Mary McCarthy instead, and never look back.
August 20, 2019
There's a point in the book where Dan Wakefield reports he was repeatedly told he's not a novelist and reading this I kinda see why. It's not a bad memoir, but I feel like he doesn't have much insight into anything short of his own immediate needs. He betrays his own thirst for recognition by framing things like Emmett Till's murder as a great journalistic opportunity–which I'm sure it was for him, but for anybody outside of the industry (or empathetic human being in general) it feels pretty tone deaf. Maybe if I had been from the midwest instead of a native New Yorker I'd be able to relate better–as is when he gets all excited about being called 'an honorary Jew' I just kinda scoffed.
It's not a very full portrait of the 1950s, strictly just Dan's own immediate experiences–though in general this reads more like an arm's length news article than a fully fleshed out novel. But I appreciate his candidness about his own sexual issues and therapy, as well as his recognition of all of these 'great men's' significant others–just as accomplished in their own right half the time.
It's not a very full portrait of the 1950s, strictly just Dan's own immediate experiences–though in general this reads more like an arm's length news article than a fully fleshed out novel. But I appreciate his candidness about his own sexual issues and therapy, as well as his recognition of all of these 'great men's' significant others–just as accomplished in their own right half the time.
September 27, 2016
Dan Wakefield writes nostalgically about his time in New York City from his college days at Columbia until he leaves for Boston on a Nieman Fellowship in 1963, and makes the reader feel nostalgic too. Nostalgic for the days when rents were affordable, when jazz greats were playing in smoky clubs in the Village. where there were five or six thriving daily newspapers and the printed word was king. Dan Wakefield was seemingly in the midst of it all: writing for Esquire, drinking with James Baldwin and Norman Mailer and listening to the tragically great Billie Holiday. Those days are long gone and will never come again. It's nice that talented writers like Wakefield have captured the mood and ambiance of the time so we can visit vicariously.
August 23, 2008
The writing was somewhat artless, which was both good -- not gushy or overly romantic, which would have been the kiss of death for the subject -- but also not fiercely compelling. Still, overall it was a fun read. It relates to my job in a kind of tangential and interesting way -- these are the old guys I work for -- so I was in the market for this kind of reminiscence. And the chapter on sex and Freudian analysis cracked me up.
August 23, 2013
Really great read. Dan Wakefield is a great writer - even when he was discussing subjects I was less invested in, I was compelled to read carefully due to his prose. The sections on McCarthy era, jazz during the 50s and abortion were pretty eye-opening and a great reminder of how far we've come. Strong rec for anyone interested in this period.
June 27, 2015
Just wonderful!
It doesn't matter if you've never been to New York. I haven't. Or if the 50s aren't your time. Not mine. This tour of the emotional and physical landscape of New York is for everyone. It's evocative, funny, poignant, informative. A great read.
It doesn't matter if you've never been to New York. I haven't. Or if the 50s aren't your time. Not mine. This tour of the emotional and physical landscape of New York is for everyone. It's evocative, funny, poignant, informative. A great read.
March 7, 2022
Exactly what I hoped it would be
I arrived in New York in 1967 and had a feeling I’d just missed something. Of course, whenever you arrive in New York you’ve just missed something. (People who arrived after I did were similarly awed by what I got to participate in and witness.) In any case, New York in the Fifties always conjured to me the fervent culture and conversation that was famously not happening in most of the rest of America those days. Wakefield wasn’t there for everything. He says very little about my particular interests in theater and TV drama in NY then. But he paints an exhilarating group portrait of mostly journalists and novelists at the time. Chapter ten, in particular, is a joy. I sensed the difference between his generation and my experience in the amount of space he gave to psychoanalysis and drinking, neither of which had much place in my life. But, more than anything I’ve read, this conveys the life of freelance writing in the city, and it puts specifics to what I had just missed. Wakefield ultimately left New York. More than 50 years later, I’m still here.
I arrived in New York in 1967 and had a feeling I’d just missed something. Of course, whenever you arrive in New York you’ve just missed something. (People who arrived after I did were similarly awed by what I got to participate in and witness.) In any case, New York in the Fifties always conjured to me the fervent culture and conversation that was famously not happening in most of the rest of America those days. Wakefield wasn’t there for everything. He says very little about my particular interests in theater and TV drama in NY then. But he paints an exhilarating group portrait of mostly journalists and novelists at the time. Chapter ten, in particular, is a joy. I sensed the difference between his generation and my experience in the amount of space he gave to psychoanalysis and drinking, neither of which had much place in my life. But, more than anything I’ve read, this conveys the life of freelance writing in the city, and it puts specifics to what I had just missed. Wakefield ultimately left New York. More than 50 years later, I’m still here.
February 4, 2022
Disregard the negative reviews. Wonderful images remain. C Wright Mills pacing excitedly in conversation. Dan writing at the window and Helen returning home. Beautiful stuff. Certain passages gave me tingles, as vivid as if these were my own memories. Thanks Dan Wakefield.
January 18, 2022
Actually I couldn't finish it. Painful.
March 1, 2023
I’m a sucker for 20th century history AND all things NYC so I enjoyed this. Some good insights into how things actually were.
March 26, 2026
Excellent and evocative.
June 1, 2019
Wish I had experienced it!
June 15, 2014
Dan Wakefield is that "Going All the Way" guy, also the fellow who edited old Kurt Vonnegut's Letter's book. I didn't know about him until I was rereading a favorable review from Vonnegut of Wakefield's (1970) book about romance and hijinks surrounding returning from the Korean war service.
In this book Wakefield sheds considerable light on the place and times in Greenwich Village, he manages to touch on all the highlights, getting a writing job, the Beats, Jazz and the general atmosphere of socializing, boozing, and various other tidbits. As Wakefield himself says, no one thought about their health in those days.
Personal notes with romance and sexuality are quite enjoyable. You can really sense the performance anxiety, underlined by the repressiveness of the age, despite being in a cosmopolitan city-the girls escape to Europe to learn the craft!
There are a great many reminisces from the likes of Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, William Buckley, and many more. This book is a treasure, a world I was born just shy of, basically directly on the perceived end of the 50s for many.
A striking moment comes when a Vietnam correspondent writes "We are losing the war in Vietnam" and his editor changes it for TIME to: "There is light at the end of the tunnel." No wonder we are so ignorant and in the dark, plagued.
When the Beatles arrived on our shores it marked an episode of sadness for many -- also a demarcation of the end of an era. The Beatles were all white-faced, lock-step, pop musicians who brought on an enormous wave of the same. The black faces of the jazz before suddenly were swept aside.
Perhaps one of the more impressive aspects of the book is the politics. McCarthyism and the conservative right were strong enough to literally pursue homosexuality (and then "communisim") with aplomb, smashing people for their perceived un-American proclivities. At one point McCarthy had a fellow on the stand who had done nothing more than written (some years ago I may add) a negative diatribe about American fanaticism with football! Imagine being taken to task by your government for not being fond of sports!
Wakefield rightly points out that McCarthy wasn't some lone fruit appearing on the vast branches of an otherwise reasonable national network. He was a sign of the times, promoted because of the prevailing attitudes. The war between the liberal intelligentsia and the tribal conservative right has never waned and is just as strident (though sometimes seemingly even more wickedly uninformed) today.
Lastly, I suppose it is inevitable as we age to imagine the world disintegrating around us. Those things we thought of as great and beloved falling into disrepair. Our subjective viewpoint sometimes gets stuck and resists being able to appreciate newness. My generation would have a hard time being offended by the Beatles -- but consider that the jazz aficionados saw them as harkening a lesser racially mixed music scene.
A great story, Thank you Mr. Wakefield!
2023
Nearly 10yrs later has given me more experience with the social consciousness that was built so powerfully i. Those times.
Wakefield mentions so many books I’ve begun buying them.
In our age of myopic hate mongering and 24hr news service all geared to a certain outlook. News for parrots! These stories seem even more important.
In this book Wakefield sheds considerable light on the place and times in Greenwich Village, he manages to touch on all the highlights, getting a writing job, the Beats, Jazz and the general atmosphere of socializing, boozing, and various other tidbits. As Wakefield himself says, no one thought about their health in those days.
Personal notes with romance and sexuality are quite enjoyable. You can really sense the performance anxiety, underlined by the repressiveness of the age, despite being in a cosmopolitan city-the girls escape to Europe to learn the craft!
There are a great many reminisces from the likes of Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, William Buckley, and many more. This book is a treasure, a world I was born just shy of, basically directly on the perceived end of the 50s for many.
A striking moment comes when a Vietnam correspondent writes "We are losing the war in Vietnam" and his editor changes it for TIME to: "There is light at the end of the tunnel." No wonder we are so ignorant and in the dark, plagued.
When the Beatles arrived on our shores it marked an episode of sadness for many -- also a demarcation of the end of an era. The Beatles were all white-faced, lock-step, pop musicians who brought on an enormous wave of the same. The black faces of the jazz before suddenly were swept aside.
Perhaps one of the more impressive aspects of the book is the politics. McCarthyism and the conservative right were strong enough to literally pursue homosexuality (and then "communisim") with aplomb, smashing people for their perceived un-American proclivities. At one point McCarthy had a fellow on the stand who had done nothing more than written (some years ago I may add) a negative diatribe about American fanaticism with football! Imagine being taken to task by your government for not being fond of sports!
Wakefield rightly points out that McCarthy wasn't some lone fruit appearing on the vast branches of an otherwise reasonable national network. He was a sign of the times, promoted because of the prevailing attitudes. The war between the liberal intelligentsia and the tribal conservative right has never waned and is just as strident (though sometimes seemingly even more wickedly uninformed) today.
Lastly, I suppose it is inevitable as we age to imagine the world disintegrating around us. Those things we thought of as great and beloved falling into disrepair. Our subjective viewpoint sometimes gets stuck and resists being able to appreciate newness. My generation would have a hard time being offended by the Beatles -- but consider that the jazz aficionados saw them as harkening a lesser racially mixed music scene.
A great story, Thank you Mr. Wakefield!
2023
Nearly 10yrs later has given me more experience with the social consciousness that was built so powerfully i. Those times.
Wakefield mentions so many books I’ve begun buying them.
In our age of myopic hate mongering and 24hr news service all geared to a certain outlook. News for parrots! These stories seem even more important.
March 2, 2017
I enjoyed it because it gave me a glimpse into what was happening in that time in NY.
October 7, 2014
Enjoyable firsthand account from a journalist of his life in "the Village" among an intimate community of writers and other artists. For someone who knew JD Salinger before he became a recluse, had Jack Kerouac pass out on his couch, and otherwise went pub-hopping with the "Who's who" of the literary world of the times, Wakefield manages to check his ego at the door and write genuine, balanced essays after years of hindsight. He gives credit for the fellow writers he valued and their sometimes mutual support and the often fun times he had with them. However, he refrains from collapsing into romanticism by his measured praise, as well as acknowledgement of some of the downsides of the times, including the cult of Freudian analysis, heavy drinking, and what the romance of following in the footsteps of Dylan Thomas caused to happen to a few of his friends. He's also not afraid to say what he really feels about a few people. All in all, a respectable snapshot of an era.
July 12, 2016
Though Wakefield's writing is at time quite vivid, the autobiographical information comes out on top on too many occasions leading me to wonder if the title is truly New York in the 50s or My New York in the 50s. Nevertheless, Wakefield clearly made his niche in the Big Apple and the content, when he permits it, reflects this eloquently. More of a 3,5 for me, but then again I still feel annoyed with the 100 occasions when he mentions friends' comments on his on work. I understood that the writing community was close at the time, there was no need for all those examples.
May 21, 2008
the book jacket accurately says: "This is his memoir of '50s Manhattan, a charmed, gentle, evocative re-creation of a time when sex was more talked about than done (and when done, was done in secret), a time when psychoanalysis was hailed as the new religion, booze was the soporific, Esquire and the Village Voice the journalistic pacesetters, jazz the music." I say: A charming and romantic but certainly rose-colored tour of the characters he rubbed shoulders with in the heyday of the beats.
February 17, 2014
The fifties were a moment in time. It was a time when the nation was pretty much culturally on the same page. People were conformists, connected. and prosperous. NYC was the center of the world and everything started there. This book does a good job of describing what it was like. It was a very happy trip down memory lane to revisit those times.
June 3, 2014
I was hoping to get a little more genuine history, although the chapter with a first-hand account of working with Dorothy Day was especially good. The personal anecdotes aren't that bad and they're padded out a bit with some from other writers but by and large it's just a whole lot of white hetero folks (James Baldwin excepted) talking about the good/bad old days.
June 9, 2009
Dan Wakefield is a thorough, weathered writer. In this memoir, he gave the reader a glimpse of his personal experiences in New York during the 1950s, meeting other writers and living the life of a journalist.
July 8, 2008
I enjoyed this alot. Different take on a different time.
November 12, 2009
A fast, fun memoir, full of midcentury Greenwich Village gossip.
April 26, 2014
Part history, part memoir, this book offers a interesting perspective on the 50's that is not conservative but also not part of the beat movement.
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May 19, 2016What a time... a little before mine in that place.
April 7, 2017
I loved this book and "meeting" so many people I'd heard of. I was a teen in the 50's and a college student in the early 60's. Even though I grew up in a small New Mexico town and then went to college in the Midwest I was an avid reader and learned about many of the writers, artists, and musicians who were friends and acquaintances of Westfield during those years. I remember how horrified a woman who was part of the staff of the dormitory I lived in at Kansas University was when she saw some of the books I read. She asked if my parents knew what I was reading - Tropic of Cancer and Giovanni's Room were a couple of them. It was an exciting time to live in New York for young, creative people and the book makes me wish I could have known it then. I saw New York City very briefly in the summer of 1958 when I was there with my parents and three brothers but got no real feel for it other than it was the biggest city I'd seen at that point, outside of Kansas City. I didn't really get to see the city until the 1980s when my husband and I visited friends there several times and then in the 2000's when my youngest daughter had moved there.
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