The bestselling and acclaimed writer Craig Taylor discusses his new book New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time (Doubleday, 2021), with Joseph Planta.

New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time by Craig Taylor (Doubleday, 2021). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: New Yorkers

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

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

Before the pandemic, in the four years before 2020, I’d gone to New York City three times. It was a city I was acquainted enough with, having seen film and television set there, or even read the odd book or two that used Manhattan and four other surrounding boroughs as its setting. Craig Taylor, who joins me now, spent much time over the last decade there. He too had been fascinated by New York, and he wanted to know it. For him, who better to give him the lay of the land, its flavour, its colour, then the people themselves. Mr. Taylor travelled through New York, walking a lot of the time through multiple corners of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and as the song says, ‘the Bronx, and Staten Island too.’ He meets all kinds of people, not the bold-faced names that’d appear in Page Six in the New York Post, but all manner of people from a window washer at Rockefeller Center, a Latino mother whose teenage son is at Rikers, a Black Lives Matter activist, an emergency dispatcher who recounts what it was like September 11^th nearly twenty years ago now, renters, the homeless, people who work in service as well as healthcare. It’s a marvelous cross-section of people whose voices come through in the book. It’s oral history that covers a significant part of New York’s history since 9/11: terrorism, a blackout, protest, recession, social injustice, and more recently a pandemic. Some of the more urgent parts of the book are when a lawyer speaks about his experience with COVID, making for a more timely, necessary book. It is called New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time. Perhaps the most affecting part of the book is when Craig introduces us to someone homeless named Joe, whom he befriends. I’ll get Craig to tell us about him and more. Craig Taylor is the author of the bestselling Londoners, as well as One Million Tiny Plays About Britain, and Return to Akenfield. He is also the editor of Five Dials. @CDLTaylor is his Twitter handle. This new book is published by Doubleday. He joined me from his home near Nanaimo, British Columbia last week. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Craig Taylor; Mr. Taylor, good morning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()

Subscribe: RSS