![]() Let’s take a moment to talk about the general purpose of an epigraph. First, we get an epigraph, a quote from Thomas Wolfe: “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” Let’s see how these initial impressions and questions develop as we start turning pages. The title is not “The City They Become” but the more dynamic, energetic, and inclusive “The City We Became.” Something is slightly off, slightly on edge in this New York City, the cover tells us.Īnd what about the rest of the title? Who is “we” and how does this personified group become a city? The tense choice, “became,” is important too, signaling that the story is over and finished (the becoming is completed) but we are going to be told how it happened. ![]() The title and some of the other graphic elements are given an electric, jittery color treatment that looks like a anaglyph. ![]() ![]() ![]() But it’s an off-kilter New York with an impossible collage of a view that makes it look as if the city’s iconic buildings and monuments (I spot the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building, and the Statue of Liberty) are massed on the East River around the Williamsburg Bridge, ready for an attack coming by way of Brooklyn. First, there’s the city, which the cover art tells us is New York. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |