Area Code 212

by Tama Janowitiz

I was walking down the street and a homeless person on the corner yelled to me, 'Hey, honey - you having a bad hair day?' Welcome to the wonderful world of Tama Janowitz, New York's wittiest and deader than deadpan social scene chronicler. Littered with idiosyncratic delights and oddities, here are hilarious stories of her eighties blind date club with Andy Warhol; her brief moment of celebrity as an elderly teenage extra in a ZZ Top video; and testing as mentally retarded on an IQ test. Janowitz gives us her unique low-down on hairless dogs and ferrets, babies and Brooklyn, big hair and bad hair days - and survival tips for real life girls. Self-deprecating, funny and often touching, AREA CODE 212 is a sparkling and deeply amusing collection.

Genres: Essays, Fiction

Paperback

First published November 27, 2004

Reviews

[Kailin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that I like TJ's stories about her own life better than her fiction - she is a strange person, and the deadpan delivery of her quirky life made me laugh outloud in many cases.

[Stefani · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the shy cousin to Janowitz's steller novel "Slaves of New York". What a disappointment! It's a series of essays related to Janowitz's life in New York for the past 20 + years, her run-ins with various celebrities (namely Andy Warhol and several notable art world figures), and her take on everything from noisy apartments to her adopted child Willow.

Janowitz seems to be typecast toward writing these types of discordant novelettes about NY life, but unfortunately, the genre is becoming redundant. There are entire chapters about the art world in the 80's that sound exactly like chapters in "Slaves of New York".

There was quite a bit of self-deprecation masquarading as pure egoism.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Area Code 212?’ I hear you ask ‘what’s that about?’ I really couldn’t tell you how I know that, I just do, that 212 is the New York telephone area code and appropriately enough, this book is a collection of essays on living in New York. It’s a bizarre and sometimes irreverent homage to one of the world’s most famous cities. Subtitled ‘New York Days, New York Nights’, the book is a collection of nearly 80 essays and articles written by Janowitz over a period of many years and published in a wide variety of different magazines and newspapers from ‘Vogue’ to ‘Modern Ferret’. She even includes a speech she gave to a University graduation that made very little sense to anyone, herself included.

The articles range from the surreal (miscarrying in the toilets of the Museum of Modern Art whilst those around her thought she’d slashed her wrists in one of the cubicles) through to the ridiculous (her desperate attempts to illegally acquire a ferret – apparently outlawed in New York) to the shocking (watching the Twin Towers collapse from her rooftop).

Janowitz is funny, clever and a great writer. Many essayists spend too much time trying to show how clever they are rather than focusing on the topic. She doesn’t bother poncing around showing off – it’s real ‘warts and all’ honesty. She even tells us about testing as a ‘retard’ on an IQ test. When you read her you feel like she’s one of your best friends telling you about some bizarre little thing that happened that day not some super-trendy author. She’s immensely approachable and then just when she’s got you thinking she’s a real Miss Ordinary she’ll floor you with an account of being an extra in a ZZ Top video or, most amazingly, hanging out with Andy Warhol and being a core member of his ‘Blind Date Club’. As the saying goes ‘There’s one thing the Queen Mother and I both hate, and that’s a name-dropper’ but in Janowitz’s case you don’t get the nauseous feeling of “Here we go again, look at all the great people she hangs out with” because in one breath she’s writing affectionately about one of art’s most well-known characters and the next she’s off getting her face on the cover of Ferret Weekly or some such rodent publication or questioning the very existence and purpose of buffets.

Janowitz is just so blissfully ordinary – and that’s what I love about her. She could be your sister, your best friend, the girl you admired in the year above you at school but she’s actually lauded as one of the most significant contemporary US writers, spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Jay McInerney and the generally-rather-nasty Bret Easton Ellis and part of a now ageing Brat Pack. She’s a ‘big time’ literary name living a small-time every-day life. OK, there are rather a lot of gala dinners (hence her hatred of buffets) but there’s little glamour in her domestic arrangements. Let’s face it, the lady married an Englishman and she likes snappy little hairless dogs – now that’s not glamorous, is it?

Janowitz loves her city, loves her family, loves her small ratty dogs and bizarre ferrets, but mostly I get the sense that she loves life. When we read about her miscarriage there’s no ‘poor me’ sentimentality – she’s just recounting the embarrassing situation in which she found herself. She doesn’t paint herself as some kind of saint and admits that her first few days with her adopted Chinese daughter she hadn’t a clue what she was doing and was ready to give her back. Living in New York she goes from hip Manhattanite to slightly-scared-to-walk-in-the-park Brooklynite because it’s the only way she can get a place for her family that’s bigger than a broom cupboard.

These essays are like a giant box of chocolates (if you’ll forgive the Forrest Gumpism). You could sit down and scoff the lot in one go or dip in and out as the fancy takes you and eke them out as precious little treats. There are a couple of the nasty soft-centres or Turkish delight that you might want to palm off on granny who’s having problems with her ‘plate’ but most of these chocs are ones you’ll want to savour and enjoy. You don’t need to know Janowitz or her fiction in order to appreciate this lovely collection of precious little gems.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I liked buying clothes with stains already on them, that way I didn't feel bad when I spilled stuff on myself....I like to lie around, eating and spilling food. Of course, the rich never eat, obviously, or they would never be able to keep wearing tiny clothes without stains." —Tama Janowitz

Even though we are very different people with very different lives, I could relate to so many of Ms Janowitz's essays. I love her quirky, practical approach to life and enjoyed this collection of essays immensely.

[Cathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but of its time, and a bit repetitive as a collection

[нєνєℓ ¢ανα · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snippets of new york life and work...

[Licca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I KNEW ANDY WARHOL

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I haven't seen any of Janowitz's writing since Slaves of New York was first in paprback. This is a book I still refer myself back to now and then for some of its best stories ("You and the Boss" and "Kurt and Natasha: A Relationship" come to mind), but this book was followed with the quickly faultering and ultimately bland novel A Cannibal in Manhattan. But the bright spots of Slaves show that there is great promise for Janowitz's work--she does have a sensible way of handling absurdity, and at her best she puts even the most absurd situations in a wonderfully accesible light. This, of course, would seem to be one of the main drives of absurdity--to make even the most fantastic situation sympathetic because it ultimately touches something innately human, something that we could always learn or re-experience.

But when Janowitz goes wrong, the human element goes away, and one is left with a bizarre string of details that do little more than delight in being strange, but with little meaningful appeal. Unfortunately, this may be what Janowitz most enjoys. I saw her read with Howard Mohr, and a good part of her reading involved presenting slides of strange people that she knew in NYC. It was at least a little arrogant, more than a little egocentric, and ultimately carried little interest except for those who already thought that NYC was something of a circus, and here was a ringmaster giving them exactly what they wanted.

This experience was pretty much the same I had when reading this book. In her collection of essays and almost diary-like experiences of NYC, Janowitz presents a host of characters, and mostly herself, but often in such short doses that most of the pieces in here feel like journal entries, but with little attraction beyond the personal or the already-in-the-know. As in the reading, I felt that many of these pieces only held appeal for those already interested or curious about NYC, or maybe those in the NYC clique who can revel in inside jokes or things that remind them of what they already know. Lucky for Janowitz, she has chosen a rather large clique to address, rather than the Rotary Club in Wichita, KS, for example, but too many of these pieces feel horribly underdeveloped and only out to point out oddities in the world, but not out to make them sympathetic. There are some moments of great humor, but they don't sustain, and moreso are defused through extended efforts to make her dogs funny, or her family life.

The biggest disappointment through this was the bravado and arrogance that played subtly throughout this. Granted, Janowitz is rather open about very personal experiences, but it is also laced with an egotism that becomes more apparent in other moments. This is probably when drove my interest out of the book quite quickly.

In all, I found myself lightly curious, but hardly engaged.

[Alvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Tama Janowitz, but she's MUCH better at light comic novels than essays.

[Johanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

essays related to nyc

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, pithy, touching stories from my favorite city.

[GK Stritch · Rating 4 out of 5]

You should have taken the painting. I agree, "And when Andy had died it seemed like something had left New York, too." (p. 334)

[Ingrid Knipfer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manhattan, the Four Seaons and Andy Warhol. Great!