The journalist and author Skip Rozin discusses his memoir The View from Apartment: On Loving and Leaving New York (2019), with Joseph Planta.

The View from Apartment Four: On Loving and Leaving New York by Skip Rozin (2019). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: The View from Apartment Four

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

New York City is one of those places for me, growing up that I knew without having been there. From all the books one’s read or the film and television one’s seen, that town has taken a mythical place in our conscience, and it feels both familiar and special when one gets there for the first time. Joining me now is Skip Rozin. The noted writer and journalist has just written a new book The View from Apartment Four: On Loving and Leaving New York. It’s a marvelous memoir about getting to New York as a young man of 24, with aspirations of being a writer by any means possible. It’s 1965, and he takes out an apartment on 77^th Street in New York City, and thus begins a life in the metropolis—a single man convinced that single life is for him. Eventually, he finds the need for companionship and marries, and despite children on the way, he keeps this rent-controlled apartment as a place to work. The book shows what life with kids is like in the big city, as well how life evolves and how he leaves the city. From his perch on the Upper West Side, he sees the neighbourhood change, as his life changes around him. I started the book just after having returned this past summer from a vacation in New York. It’s the third time I’ve been there in about four years. I can’t seem to shake it off. Coming back, I read the book with such nostalgia for the place that’s fascinated me so, even for an era I would never know, a place that has been such a part of Mr. Rozin’s life. Skip Rozin has written four books including One Step From Glory, The Name of the Game, and The Business of Sports. He was a writer and producer on ESPN’s SportsCentury series. He was a travel writer for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and has his work has appeared in Audubon, the Wall Street Journal, Harpers, Parents, and BusinessWeek, among other publications. Visit www.skiprozin.com for more. I spoke to Mr. Rozin back in mid-October. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Skip Rozin; Mr. Rozin, good morning.

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