"Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York," by Roz Chast

“Going Into Town” (Bloomsbury, 2017), by the inimitable writer/artist/cartoonist Roz Chast, is subtitled “A Love Letter to New York,” and that it is indeed. Chast's love for the city is palpable. Chast is well known to New Yorker readers as a longtime contributor of her unique cartoons. She is also the author/artist of the bestselling 2014 graphic memoir, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”, which deals with the author’s relationship with her aging parents (see my friend Mary’s guest post on that book on 5/31/14). Chast herself grew up in Brooklyn and always thought of Manhattan as the center of everything. She and her husband did move to a “leafy suburb” north of New York when their children were little, but she never lost her love for New York. She says that the germ of the current book was her desire to offer her daughter some basic facts and guidance about Manhattan when the daughter was about to move to the city for college. She instructs her daughter in such things as the basic layout of Manhattan, the subway system, apartments, museums, and Central Park. Each page has a detailed, quirky drawing, along with dry, wry commentary. For example, she writes candidly that “For some reason, I’ve always preferred cities to Nature. I’m interested in the person-made. I like to watch and eavesdrop on people” (p. 40). And “When you walk around, keep your eyes and ears open. Partly for safetly… but also because there’s SO MUCH MATERIAL. The people, the buildings, things expected, things unexpected, or something surprising…” (p. 50). Chast's people are drawn as somewhat frumpy, in an utterly charming way. This book is an absolute joy to read and look at, and repays repeated readings with new surprising details on each page. And as a bonus: although I have visited New York many times over the years, I learned some new facts about it in this book.