Oh Adam Gopnik. How in love I once was with you. How amazed I was with your facility to dig into layers of everyday life and come up with wise genius. How many times did I read aloud to friends your original New Yorker "Bumping Into Ravioli" essay?

I still may be in love with you, but this book tested my love, much like Cupid tested Psyche; I turned on the light to see you and you ran away, leaving only a poorly edited, slapped-together published collection of essays to remember you by. You even messed with my beloved Ravioli. Why would you do such a thing?

And perhaps, Adam, I still love you but choose not to love one of your books. That is indeed possible. It may, Adam, not even be your fault, as this tome is so New York as to be inconceivable to one who doesn't love New York as you do. Which I categorically do not.

Don't get me wrong, Adam. I read the whole thing. And I found many phrases and thoughts to be ponder-worthy. Sadly, some of those phrases and thoughts were repeated, almost verbatim, in different essays, a fault that lies not with you, perhaps, but with your editors. Or with your publishers, who put you on deadline.

But even in this slipshod collection of words, your amazing clever wisdom peeks out every once in a great while;

"In my experience, at least, it is the liberal parents who tend to be the most socially conservative-the most queasy at the endless ribbon of violence and squalor that passes for American entertainment, more concerned to protect their children from it. One might have the impression that it is the Upper West Side atheist and the Lancaster County Amish who dispute the prize for who can be most obsessive about having the children around the table at six p.m. for a homemade dinner from farm-raised food."

"The art of child rearing, of parenting, is to center the children and then knock them off center; to make them believe that they are safely anchored in the middle of a secure world and somehow also to let them know that the world they live in is not a fixed sphere with them at the center; that they stand instead alongside a river of history, of older souls, that rushes by them, where they are only a single small incident. To make them believe that they can rule all creation, while making them respect the malevolent forces that can ruin every garden: That is the task."

"Childhood is just like life, only ten times faster."

"We didn't make the children fly. We simply lowered the heavens and told them they were flying, as we always do."

In conclusion, Adam, I choose to still love you. I will lay this book aside and convince myself to still gasp in excited anticipation when I see your name affixed to an article in the New Yorker table of contents. I will give you a second chance. And, probably, a third chance, too, if need be. Because I know how good you can be.

J. P. Donleavy once wrote a hilarious novel titled n  A Fairy Tale of New York.n Adam Gopnik's masterpiece could be just as aptly titled. He has, however, chosen a somewhat more prosaic title while letting the content of his non-fiction work read very much like the title of Donleavy's opus.

While Gopnik's story is solidly a New York story (of both the people and the place), it's equally a story about bringing up children in "the city that never sleeps" (even if they do). Whether the city itself contributes in a measurable way to their development is, of course, anyone's guess. It could well be that with their privileged genetic inheritance, they were simply meant to become the extraordinary children the author makes them out to be. But Adam Gopnik, himself, has no doubt played a critical role in their development, and we have him to thank and admire for the end result.

As a parent, myself, of two rather creative children, I felt (and feel) a certain kinship with Adam Gopnik and fully expect our progeny to one day share a communal spotlight.

In the meantime, I thank him for an extraordinary read. It has been a long time since I could honestly say of a book that I didn't want it to end. I say that now without qualification about n  Through the Children's Gaten and urge not only would-be parents, but also appreciative readers to open their eyes, minds and hearts to this gift of a book.

RRB
10/11/12

i chioschi che vendono bagels, le freddure, la musica di gershwin, lo storione affumicato su amsterdam avenue, andare in psicoanalisi. realizzo che le prime cinque cose che mi vengono in mente se penso a new york sono 100% kosher. grazie a dio (il loro, sia chiaro. è sufficientemente biblico perché io non lo voglia irritare) esistono gli ebrei americani.
ps: certo poi ci sarebbe anche adam sandler. ma - e anche questo l’ha detto un famoso ebreo, austriaco ma naturalizzato statunitense - nessuno è perfetto.

https://youtu.be/g2akLhosPEg

I received this book from a friend when, after years of living in NYC, I finally left--and nobody could believe it. I've always noticed that about NY (I lived there since I was 17): everyone complains and dreams of moving out, but no one believes anyone would actually do it (though people do, constantly). So I kept the book, through a move to the West and then here to Europe, without ever reading it. I'd read--with enjoyment--a few of Gopnik's pieces in The New Yorker but for the most part, I judged this to be a yuppy, overly privileged Woody Allen sort of thing: look how happy my love is, I live in the best city in the world!

Well, it sort of is and sort of isn't. For starters, the whole book is under the unavoidable shadow of 9/11--which changed everything forever, as I know since I was there and my then boyfriend-now husband worked 2 blocks away. Gopnik's handling of this delicate shadow is moving and realistic. Also, the Gopnik's New York is a lived-in New York, an experienced one, of the adult, the parent, the husband. It's not the NY you see via Hollywood movies or TV shows (take any 'Friends' episode, and nothing in it is true!) where 30-something hold implausible jobs, wear unaffordable clothing and live in non-existent apartments! Having walked the streets mentioned by Gopnik and having shared those experiences--as a woman, a mother, a wife--I related completely and I could feel it, sense it, see the city.

On the other hand, there are two minuses that prevent me from giving the book 4 stars: one, there's little mention of the 'other' NY: the stress, the narrowness, the crap for your money equation. Even when you're past that stage and can afford not to deal with it daily, it's still there, always, somewhere in the back. And two, Gopnik's writing is uneven. He's no Joan Didion, for eg. There are incredibly lyrical and thought-provoking passages with some incredibly bogged-down, hard to read ones.

In all, however, it works. I'm looking forward to trying his first book now, about Paris.

(3.5) adam feels like a member of my family... sometimes his long-winded explanations and digressions really annoy me but at the end of the day he just gets it

This book is full of really interesting (or perhaps just novel) juxtapositions of personal history and greater ideas; for instance, when replacing his daughter's dead fish with another the author almost goes in for the "vertigo" treatment but sort of cops out at the last minute. then amazingly the daughter starts calling the new fish by the old name anyway, which apparently has ties to both his daughter's psychological development and to hitchcock's idea of suspense. i've read this book slowly over time because its more easily digested this way. An odd book, but a good read.

I didn’t like the first chapter of this book. Only pursued it because it had good reviews and I wasn’t going through a good reading phase so little left and self doubting. I’m glad I continued. I have no interest in New York and don’t really want to visit it. Despite that I understood where he was coming from and why he loves it. Also his descriptions are great. Not all about New York but about family life, life’s truths etc.
It took me a long time to read and I guess, if not been a library book, it would have been better just to read it piece by piece as it is a series of essays as described on cover, yet all entwined in one story.
It maybe ought to be a 4 and a half but not a 5. I deducted the point, or half a point, for not being interesting completely throughout book. That’s unfair, but as he implies so is life.

I was looking forward to reading this after having really liked "Paris to the Moon". However, not nearly as many of the pieces were as gripping to me. There are some really good ones, just a few too many that needed something more. I am not sure how many tidbits I will remember from this one. I remember lots of little moments from "Paris to the Moon" and would recommend it enthusiastically.

I adored this book -- a wonderful account of parenthood and living in New York, and observation of childhood and its pleasures and strangenesses, especially in New York. This contained two of my favorite essays from the New Yorker, which I'm happy to have between hard covers: "Bumping into Mr. Ravioli," his account of his three-year-old daughter's imaginary friend, who is too busy to play with her (only in New York, kids, only in New York), which he expands into a meditation into the busyness of all our modern lives; and "Last of the Giant Metrozoids," about his friend, the MoMA curator Kirk Varnedoe, coaching an eight-year-old boys' football team as he prepares some lectures on modern art and faces his death via incurable cancer. (The last one always makes me cry, and earns the tears.)

But I had never read the bulk of the pages here, including his reflections on 9/11, his account of analysis with a great Freudian (final conclusion: "Life has many worthwhile aspects"), his misunderstanding the meaning of "LOL" as "Lots of Love." He excels at seeing the world in a grain of sand, which can occasionally be a bit tiring; sometimes a kid's passing remark is just a passing remark. But more often it opens up new connections, new depths and delights. I recommend this highly for all parents, New Yorkers, and fans of lovely writing.

I was not familiar with Adam Gopnik's work - it has been years since I regularly read "The New Yorker". I thought that this book was going to read more like a memoir when it actually is a collection of essays - some tied together by the stories of his children. Others felt a bit disjointed. I did enjoy reading about his son and daughter and their lives in post-9/11 NYC, and loved the sensitivity with which he wrote of their childhood views of life. I also found his insightful observations of New Yorkers at that surreal time very compelling. Overall, there was much to like in this collection and I will certainly read "Paris to the Moon".

"The taxi has its checkered lore, the subway its legend, and the Town Car a certain Michael Douglas in Wall Street icon quality; but if there is a memorable bus scene in literature, or an unforgettable moment in a movie that takes place on a New York City bus, I have not found it. it isn't that buses are intrinsically inimical to symbolism: The London bus has a poetry as rich as the Tube's - there is Mary Poppins, there is Mrs. Dalloway. In Paris, Pascal rides the bus, Zazie dreams of riding the Metro, and that is, evenly, that. In L.A., Keanu Reeves rides the bus, round and round in desperate Dennis Hopper-driven circles. But as a symbolic repository, the New Yo4rk City bus does not exist. The only significant symbolic figure that the new York bus has had is Ralph Kramden, and what he symbolizes about the bus is being stuck in one is more form of comic frustration and disappointment; the bus is exactly the kind of institution that would have Ralph Kramden as its significant symbolic figure."

Although I didn't think this was as good as "Paris to the Moon" it should be a must-read for New Yorkers with children or thinking about having children while living in the city. I particularly liked Gopnik's concern over his daughter's over-programmed imaginary friend and the adventures of trick-or-treating in high rise apartment buildings. Basically this is an enjoyable read, well-written with warmth and humor.