Everyone knows how much New York has changed over the last few decades. But author Adam Gopnik has a personal perspective on this, which he explores in his new book, "At The Stranger’s Gate."
Gopnik writes about moving to New York with his wife, Martha, an experience he likens to “an old-fashioned romantic comedy.”
“We wanted to go to New York for the same reasons I suppose that people have always wanted to go from the provinces to the metropolis,” he said on Boston Public Radio yesterday. “We were such a pair of starry-eyed sentimentalists.”
Gopnik recalls putting up pieces of sheet music in his tiny apartment nicknamed “The Blue Room.” He said he and his wife were “in love with American songs and with the dream of New York.”
“You believe that if you have enough poetry in your life, then the cockroaches will somehow magically vanish,” he said. “They don’t, and that’s part of the lesson you learn in the course of the book.”
Adam Gopnik is an award-winning author and staff writer at the New Yorker. His latest memoir is "At the Stranger’s Gate: Arrivals in New York." To hear his interview in its entirety, click on the audio player above.
