{"product_id":"going-into-the-city-portrait-of-a-critic-as-a-young-man-9780062238801","title":"Going Into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of our great essayists and journalists--the Dean of American Rock Critics, Robert Christgau--takes us on a heady tour through his life and times in this vividly atmospheric and visceral memoir that is both a love letter to a New York long past and a tribute to the transformative power of art.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLifelong New Yorker Robert Christgau has been writing about pop culture since he was twelve and getting paid for it since he was twenty-two, covering rock for \u003cem\u003eEsquire\u003c\/em\u003e in its heyday and personifying the music beat at the \u003cem\u003eVillage Voice\u003c\/em\u003e for over three decades. Christgau listened to Alan Freed howl about rock 'n' roll before Elvis, settled east of Manhattan's Avenue B forty years before it was cool, witnessed Monterey and Woodstock and Chicago '68, and the first abortion speak-out. He's caught Coltrane in the East Village, Muddy Waters in Chicago, Otis Redding at the Apollo, the Dead in the Haight, Janis Joplin at the Fillmore, the Rolling Stones at the Garden, the Clash in Leeds, Grandmaster Flash in Times Square, and every punk band you can think of at CBGB.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChristgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. \u003cem\u003eGoing Into the City\u003c\/em\u003e is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that showed him the way. Like Alfred Kazin's \u003cem\u003eA Walker in the City, \u003c\/em\u003e E. B. White's \u003cem\u003eHere Is New York\u003c\/em\u003e, Joseph Mitchell's \u003cem\u003eUp in the Old Hotel\u003c\/em\u003e, and Patti Smith's \u003cem\u003eJust Kids\u003c\/em\u003e, it is a loving portrait of a lost New York. It's an homage to the city of Christgau's youth from Queens to the Lower East Side--a city that exists mostly in memory today. And it's a love story about the Greenwich Village girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChristgau, Robert:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003eRobert Christgau has covered popular music for \u003cem\u003eEsquire, Newsday, Creem, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Blender, MSN Music\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe Village Voice\u003c\/em\u003e, where he was a senior editor and chief music critic for thirty-two years. He is currently a columnist for Noisey.com, a contributing critic at NPR's \u003cem\u003eAll Things Considered\u003c\/em\u003e, and a Visiting Arts Professor at New York University. The author of three books based on his hundreds of Consumer Guide columns and two essay collections, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a National Arts Journalism Program Senior Fellow, and a Ferris Teaching Fellow at Princeton. Born and raised in Queens, he has lived in Manhattan's East Village since 1965.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dey Street Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50317943701778,"sku":"9780062238801","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_e9004cd8-c0cc-42aa-aa3e-25e429fbf3f7.jpg?v=1727543601","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/going-into-the-city-portrait-of-a-critic-as-a-young-man-9780062238801","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}