Feral City
On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A Vulture Best Memoir of 2022
A Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2022
A Bookforum Favorite Book of 2022
A 2023 Transgender Nonfiction finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards
What happens when an entire social class abandons a metropolis? This genre-bending journey through lockdown New York offers an exhilarating, intimate look at a city returned to its rebellious spirit.
The pandemic lockdown of 2020 launched an unprecedented urban experiment. Traffic disappeared from the streets. Times Square fell silent. And half a million residents fled the most crowded city in America. In this innovative and thrilling book, author and social critic Jeremiah Moss, hailed as “New York City’s career elegist” (New York Times), explores a city emptied of the dominant class—and their controlling influence. “Plagues have a disinhibiting effect,” Moss writes. “As the normal order is suspended, the repressive force of civilization lifts and our rules fall away, shifting the boundaries of society and psyche.”
In public spaces made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss experienced an uncanny time warp. Biking through deserted Manhattan, he encountered the hustlers, eccentrics, and renegades who had been pressed into silence and invisibility by an oppressive, normative gentrification, now reemerging to reclaim the city. For one wild year the streets belonged to wandering nudists and wheelie bikers, mystical vagabonds and performance artists working to disrupt the status quo, passionate activists protesting for Black lives—along with the everyday New Yorkers who had been pushed to the margins for too long. Participating in a historic explosion of activism, resistance, and spontaneity, from queer BLM marches to exuberant outdoor dance parties, Moss discovered an intoxicating freedom. Without “hyper-normal” people to constrain it, New York became more creative, connected, humane, and joyful than it had been in years.
Moss braids this captivating narrative with an account of his renewed sense of place as a transgender man, weaving together insights from psychoanalysis, literature, and queer theory. A kaleidoscopic vision of a city transformed, Feral City offers valuable insight into the way public space and the spaces inside us are controlled and can be set free.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Psychoanalyst Jeremiah Moss takes us on a fascinating, thought-provoking tour of New York City during the COVID-19 lockdown. Moss, the author of Vanishing New York, shares how he, a trans man, originally found home and community in the East Village before becoming a stranger in his own town as gentrification accelerated. When the pandemic hit, it brought about an unforeseen consequence: as many newcomers fled, those who stayed were able to reanimate the soul of that lost city—in all its weird and boisterous rebellion. Alongside personal stories, Feral City weaves together queer theory, conversations with friends, photographs, and Moss’ insights as a therapist. It’s a beautifully written tribute to outsiders and the cities that welcome them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pushcart Prize winner Moss (Vanishing New York) reflects in these razor-sharp essays on how life in New York City changed when the "New People" ("young and funded... utterly unblemished, physically fit and clean-cut, as bland as skim milk and unsalted Saltines") fled during the Covid-19 pandemic. Moss, who moved to the East Village in the 1990s as a "young, queer, transsexual poet," opens with a lacerating account of how his building has changed in recent decades, describing neighbors who presume their "total security and comfort" and fill restaurants with overbearing noise "charged with social status." Though he savored the "velvet drape of silence" that descended when these New People abandoned the city in March 2020, he also had to reckon with fear and isolation. "Buddy, if this goes on much longer," a pizza vendor tells him, "you should buy a gun. We're all gonna need guns." Nevertheless, "the weird magic of pandemic time" allowed Moss to rediscover the "subterranean feeling" he used to experience in New York and to meet the "radicals, skateboarders, artists, and eccentrics" who stayed behind. Shot through with pinpoint character sketches, incisive reportage on the Occupy City Hall protest movement, and lucid discussions of queer theory, this is a vital contribution to New York City history.
