Main entry:

L'Official, Peter, 1980- author.

Title & Author:

Urban legends : the South Bronx in representation and ruin / Peter L'Official.

Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2020.
©2020

Description:

310 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: When legend becomes fact -- The lone tenement -- Seeing is believing: Gordon Matta-Clark and municipal trompe l'oeil -- Death and taxes: photographing the South Bronx, 1979- -- A global Bronx: fashion moda international -- South Bronx surreal: infrastructure, information, and identity in the literary South Bronx -- Charlotte's web: race, place, and the new paranoid style of South Bronx film -- Conclusion: The river is deep.

Summary:

"For decades, the South Bronx was America's "inner city." Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins-none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium-proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives-urban crisis and cultural renaissance-have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L'Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L'Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark's carvings of abandoned buildings with the city's trompe l'oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx's infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a "global Bronx" as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

9780674238077 hardcover
0674238079 hardcover

Subject:

Urban folklore New York (State) New York.
Civilization.
Manners and customs.
Urban folklore.
Bronx (New York, N.Y.) Civilization 20th century.
Bronx (New York, N.Y.) In art.
Bronx (New York, N.Y.) Social life and customs.
New York (State) New York.
New York (State) New York Bronx.

Form/genre:

Art.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 318525
Call No.: 318525
Copy: 1
Status: Available