RSSGoing Into the City:
Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man
Hardcover, [February 24] 2015, Dey Street Books, 384 pages.
Paperback, [February 16] 2016, Dey Street Books, 384 pages.
From the publisher's page:
One 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.
Lifelong 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 Esquire in its heyday and personifying the music beat at the Village Voice 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.
Christgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going Into the City 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 A Walker in the City, E. B. White's Here Is New York, Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel, and Patti Smith's Just Kids, 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.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Eighty-Hour Week
- The Two Sides of Murray Street
- The Wonderful World of Jews
- Nonconformism Can Be Fun
- Vacillations
- American Studies
- The High '60s
- Aftermath
- Like a Horse and Carriage
- Four Owners, Six Editors, One Paper
- Bon Bon Vie
- Acknowledgments
Publisher Info
Excerpts
- On Visiting CBGB in the Seventies and falling for Television's 'Marquee Moon' (Rolling Stone, Feb. 16, 2015)
- Robert Christgau Remembers the Deaths of Lennon, Marley, and Lester Bangs (Vulture, Feb. 17, 2015)
- Read an Excerpt From Robert Christgau's Memoir 'Going Into the City' (Spin, Feb. 23, 2015)
Interviews
Sorted reverse by date. Bold ones most recommended:
- Michaelangelo Matos: Interview: Music Journalist Robert Christgau (Red Bull Music Academy, Mar. 24, 2015)
- Jason Silverstein: Robert Christgau talks about love, rock and the other obsessions of his first memoir 'Going Into the City' (Daily News, Mar. 20, 2015)
- Hilary Hughes: Robert Christgau Opens Up About His Memoir -- So Shut Up and Listen (City Pages, Mar. 16, 2015)
- Scott Timberg: "The notion that no current popular music is of quality is philistine": Robert Christgau on Beyoncé, Kanye, the Ramones, online journalism and bohemian sex lives (Salon, Mar. 8, 2015)
- Oscar Garza/James Kim: 'The Dean of Rock Critics,' Robert Christgau, on a lifetime of listening (89.3 KPCC: The Frame, Mar. 7, 2015)
- Hilary Hughes: Robert Christgau Opens Up About His Memoir -- So Shut Up and Listen (Village Voice, Mar. 3, 2015)
- Arum Rath: Robert Christgau Reviews His Own Life (NPR, Mar. 1, 2015)
- YouTube: Robert Christgau & Rob Sheffield: Going Into the City (Feb. 27, 2015)
- Jon Dolan: Robert Christgau, Rock & Roll Radical (Rolling Stone, Feb. 27, 2015)
- Jon Foro: Authentic Voices; New Memoirs from Kim Gordon and Robert Christgau (Omnivoracious, Feb. 25, 2015)
- Dan Buyanovsky: "I'm a Good Writer" - Robert Christgau on the Life and Legacy of Robert Christgau (Noisey, Feb. 24, 2015)
- Dan Weiss: Q&A: Robert Christgau on His Memoir 'Going Into the City' and Not Loving the War on Drugs (Spin, Feb. 24, 2015)
- Rebecca Asoulin: Robert Christgau '62 defines role of rock critic (The Dartmouth, Sept. 14, 2014)
Reviews
Sorted reverse by date. Bold ones most recommended:
- Dal Griffiths (Cambridge University Press, Apr. 14, 2016)
- Simon Crowe: The Book I Read: Going Into the City by Robert Christgau (Mostly Movies, Oct. 15, 2015)
- Edward M Gomez: It's Only Rock'n'Roll, But They Like It: New Books from Robert Christgau and Jessica Hopper (Hyperallergic, Aug. 29, 2015)
- Kevin Mattson: What Happened to the Rock Critic? (Dissent, June 3, 2015)
- Roy Trakin: Robert Christgau - Going Into the City (Addicted to Noise, May 27, 2015)
- Jim Carroll: Going into the City: Portrait of the Critic as a Young Man by Robert Christgau (The Irish Times, May 23, 2015)
- Editor's choice: Christgau's 'Going Into the City -- Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man' (The Buffalo News, Apr. 19, 2015)
- Henry Hauser: Going Into the City (Consequence of Sound, Apr. 18, 2015)
- Charles R Cross: Robert Christgau memoir 'Going Into the City' like history of rock criticism (The Seattle Times, Apr. 12, 2015)
- Mike Opal: Robert Christgau Falls From Grace in 'Going into the City' (PopMatters, Apr. 9, 2015)
- Bob Ruggeiro: Legendary Rock Scribe's Memoir Light on Music (Houston Press Blogs, Apr. 8, 2015)
- Gerald Peary: Fuse Book Review: "Going into the City" -- A Restrained Portrait of the Critic as a Young Man (The Arts Fuse, Mar. 31, 2015)
- Going Into the Broad City (Steven Rubio's Online Life, Mar. 23)
- Craig Hubert: Pop Art: The Memoirs of Kim Gordon and Robert Christgau (Blouin Artinfo, Mar. 16, 2015)
- Miles Raymer: Going Into the City by Robert Christgau (Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 10, 2015)
- J.R. Nelson: On Robert Christgau's New Memoir (Pitchfork, Mar. 10, 2015)
- Glenn Dixon: Going Into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man (Washington City Paper, Mar. 6, 2015)
- Dave Itzkoff: Robert Christgau's 'Going Into the City' (New York Times Sunday Book Review, Mar. 6, 2015)
- Dana Stevens: Beautifully, Profoundly, Naively, Contradictorily, Romantically, Kinetically, Jokily, Cockily, Fearfully, Drunkenly, Goofily, Impudently (Slate Book Review, Mar. 4, 2015)
- Ivan Kreilkamp on Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man (Los Angeles Review of Books, Mar. 3, 2015)
- Margaret Eby: The Dean's List: Robert Christgau's 10,000 Opinions (Brooklyn Magazine, Mar. 2, 2015)
- Devin McKinney: Guts on the Page: Notes on the Absolute Unity of Robert Christgau (Critics at Large, Feb. 28, 2015)
- Kevin J.H. Dettmar: 'Going Into the City,' rock critic Robert Christgau's back pages (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26, 2015)
- Mark Athitakis: Going Into the City (BN Review, Feb. 25, 2015)
- Dwight Garner: Robert Christgau Reflects on His Career as a Rock Critic (New York Times, Feb. 24, 2015)
- Jack Dickey: How to Survive 13,000 Album Reviews (Time, Feb. 24, 2015)
- Leah Carroll: Almost Famous: The B+ Adventures of Robert Christgau (The Concourse, Feb. 23, 2015)
- Kate Tuttle: Books (The Boston Globe, Feb. 21, 2015)
- Joanna Scutts: Going Into the City by Robert Christgau review -- lessons from the 'dean of rock criticism' (The Guardian, Feb. 20, 2015)
- Alex Pappademas: Maximum Bob: The Dean of American Rock Critics' Memoir Is Revealing, Rewarding, and Full of Copulating (Grantland, Feb. 19, 2015)
- Publisher's Weekly (Feb. 1, 2014)
- Kirkus Reviews (Dec. 21, 2014)
Other Notices
- Richard Horgan: Robert Christgau Checks Out the Ramones (Fishbowl NY, Feb. 17, 2015)
Shopping
- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
- Books-A-Million
- Google Play
- Indie-Bound
- iTunes
- Powell's City of Books
- Strand (New York City)
- Word Bookstores (Brooklyn, Jersey City)
Miscellaneous
- Jason Gubbels: Going Into the City With Robert Christgau (Rhapsody, Mar. 5, 2015): a playlist
- Spotify playlist: songs mentioned in the book