Going into the City
AuthorRobert Christgau
LanguageEnglish
GenreMemoir
Published2015
PublisherDey Street Books
Pages367
ISBN978-0-06-223879-5

Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man is a 2015 memoir by American music critic Robert Christgau.

Content

According to NPR, the memoir "takes the reader through the music that inspired [Christgau's] career, the women who sharpened his work over the years, and a childhood spent in Queens, where he learned from the DJ who gave rock 'n' roll its name."[1] Christgau also pays tribute to the influence of his wife and fellow writer, Carola Dibbell. "Her aesthetic responsiveness was unending", he wrote. "No one affected my writing like Carola."[2]

Critical reception

Writing for the New York Times, Dave Itzkoff gave the book a favorable review, saying, among other things, that the chapter about Christgau and his wife's difficulties conceiving a child was "surely one of the book’s most touching sections."[3] Henry Hauser of Consequence of Sound compared the book favorably to Christgau's reviews, saying they were both "dense, tight, and brimming with insight."[4] Writing for The Guardian, Joanna Scutts said that in the book, Christgau "embraces" the challenge of "saying something new and distinctive...with undimming energy."[5]

References

  1. Rath, Arun; Christgau, Robert (March 1, 2015). "Robert Christgau Reviews His Own Life". NPR. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
  2. Gross, Jason (June 2015). "The Dean of Rock Critics Schools Us on Himself: Robert Christgau's Going Into the City (Dey St.)". Rock's Backpages. Retrieved January 1, 2019. (subscription required)
  3. Itzkoff, Dave (March 8, 2015). "Robert Christgau's 'Going Into the City'". New York Times. Retrieved December 26, 2015.
  4. Hauser, Henry (April 18, 2015). "Going into the City: Portrait of the Critic as a Young Man by Robert Christgau". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved December 26, 2015.
  5. Scutts, Joanna (February 20, 2015). "Going Into the City by Robert Christgau review – lessons from the 'dean of rock criticism'". The Guardian. Retrieved December 26, 2015.
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