Manhattan Noir 2
The Classics
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
This anthology spans more than a century of noir fiction set in the heart of the Big Apple—“17 sure winners” from Edith Wharton, Donald Westlake, and more (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
The island of Manhattan has been a breeding ground of crime, longing, and discontent since its earliest days as a city—and a natural setting for noir fiction since the genre was invented. And from Harlem to Greenwich Village to Wall Street, it has also been home to many a great writer. After the success of the first Manhattan Noir, dedicated to all-new stories, Lawrence Block combed through the borough’s long literary history to deliver this stellar collection of classics, even stretching the bounds of noir to include poems by Edgar Allen Poe and others.
Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics features entries by Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Susan Isaacs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While Akashic's original city-themed anthologies tend to be hit or miss, its third reprint volume (after Brooklyn Noir 2 and D.C. Noir 2) offers 17 sure winners by such literary heavyweights as Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Damon Runyon, Donald E. Westlake and Joyce Carol Oates. The tales range in time from 1891 to 2008, giving the book a variety some others in the series have lacked. Block makes a persuasive case in his introduction for including Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," written in 1845 on what would become Manhattan's Upper West Side, as well as poetic selections by Horace Gregory and Geoffrey Bartholomew, whose works are set respectively in a Chelsea rooming house and McSorley's bar in the East Village. If one had to choose the single story that epitomizes noir, the honors would go to Cornell Woolrich's "New York Blues," a bleak tale of love and loneliness, madness and death.
