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| Floating City by Sudhir Venkatesh – review | Floating City by Sudhir Venkatesh – review |
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| The first thing readers should know is that Sudhir Venkatesh is a sociologist. This is made clear in the title of his previous book: Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Crosses the Line. Like the acclaimed writer Katherine Boo, Venkatesh is interested in deep research, in spending years with subjects and piecing together a detailed portrait. Unlike Boo, Venkatesh is present in his books. He has crossed the line and entered the scene. The pronoun "I" is the first word of both Gang Leader for a Day and his new book, Floating City. | The first thing readers should know is that Sudhir Venkatesh is a sociologist. This is made clear in the title of his previous book: Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Crosses the Line. Like the acclaimed writer Katherine Boo, Venkatesh is interested in deep research, in spending years with subjects and piecing together a detailed portrait. Unlike Boo, Venkatesh is present in his books. He has crossed the line and entered the scene. The pronoun "I" is the first word of both Gang Leader for a Day and his new book, Floating City. |
| As explanation, he states that the book is a memoir of his experiences while gathering academic material. It's just "not appropriate for mainstream academic social science publications". The formal research findings have appeared elsewhere. What's left for the rest of us? "Hustlers, strivers, dealers, call girls and other lives" – the lives of the subtitled. All can be found inside, but as the book progresses it becomes clear that one of the most important "other lives" is Venkatesh himself. | As explanation, he states that the book is a memoir of his experiences while gathering academic material. It's just "not appropriate for mainstream academic social science publications". The formal research findings have appeared elsewhere. What's left for the rest of us? "Hustlers, strivers, dealers, call girls and other lives" – the lives of the subtitled. All can be found inside, but as the book progresses it becomes clear that one of the most important "other lives" is Venkatesh himself. |
| In Gang Leader for a Day, he appeared mostly as a brave, somewhat naive guide. He was a pony-tailed Grateful Dead fan when he first entered the notorious Robert Taylor projects in Chicago. Part of the pleasure of the book is in guessing what the residents and gang members thought of this presence in their lives. He became a champion lingerer, making small talk, listening to stories, and eating helpings of sweet potato pie. "I'm beginning to think the only reason you come over here is to eat," says one subject, JT. His friendship with JT, a local gang leader, evolves, and a complex character emerges. Nearly halfway through the book, Venkatesh earns the kind of page break deep researchers savour: "After nearly three years …" | In Gang Leader for a Day, he appeared mostly as a brave, somewhat naive guide. He was a pony-tailed Grateful Dead fan when he first entered the notorious Robert Taylor projects in Chicago. Part of the pleasure of the book is in guessing what the residents and gang members thought of this presence in their lives. He became a champion lingerer, making small talk, listening to stories, and eating helpings of sweet potato pie. "I'm beginning to think the only reason you come over here is to eat," says one subject, JT. His friendship with JT, a local gang leader, evolves, and a complex character emerges. Nearly halfway through the book, Venkatesh earns the kind of page break deep researchers savour: "After nearly three years …" |
| In the new book, the solidity and continuity of Chicago's neighbourhoods have been replaced by New York's shifting landscape. This is 21st-century NYC: a city "global in feel and increasingly fast-paced, its people endlessly shuttling across familiar social landscapes and tribal boundaries as they weave new patterns in the world." A different city calls for a different narrator, a different Venkatesh: he is no longer the naive student, but a professor at Columbia. "I was hungry," he writes, "and I felt I needed the stature and challenge of an Ivy League badge." "What should I study?" he asks. "What if I focused on the subterranean ways people made their living?" If only he could gather the numbers of people necessary for a formal sociology project. "I needed more prostitutes, more pimps, more madams," he writes. We do get to the individuals. There's Shine, a Harlem drug dealer trying to break into the downtown scene. We meet a Harvard-educated socialite with a stable of escorts. We meet Manjun, whose porn shop is a focal point for local prostitutes, and whose life is slowly slipping out of control. Throughout, Venkatesh works to demonstrate the invisible connections between the high and low. He also begins to grow wary of his own profession: "An ethnographer is always haunted by his subjects and their tragic vulnerabilities." | In the new book, the solidity and continuity of Chicago's neighbourhoods have been replaced by New York's shifting landscape. This is 21st-century NYC: a city "global in feel and increasingly fast-paced, its people endlessly shuttling across familiar social landscapes and tribal boundaries as they weave new patterns in the world." A different city calls for a different narrator, a different Venkatesh: he is no longer the naive student, but a professor at Columbia. "I was hungry," he writes, "and I felt I needed the stature and challenge of an Ivy League badge." "What should I study?" he asks. "What if I focused on the subterranean ways people made their living?" If only he could gather the numbers of people necessary for a formal sociology project. "I needed more prostitutes, more pimps, more madams," he writes. We do get to the individuals. There's Shine, a Harlem drug dealer trying to break into the downtown scene. We meet a Harvard-educated socialite with a stable of escorts. We meet Manjun, whose porn shop is a focal point for local prostitutes, and whose life is slowly slipping out of control. Throughout, Venkatesh works to demonstrate the invisible connections between the high and low. He also begins to grow wary of his own profession: "An ethnographer is always haunted by his subjects and their tragic vulnerabilities." |
| True, but this is not charity work. As the fates of his interviewees grow tragic, the book becomes compelling, especially with the entry of Carla, a resident of the floating city. Here is what Venkatesh wants – an embodiment of a New York where boundaries are permeable. Carla is a prostitute exotic enough for white clients; a latina without an "embarrassing" foreign accent; a woman not out of place at gallery openings in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. She couples a gargantuan appetite for drugs and drink with an unwavering faith she'll never be cut or beat up. For an ethnographer, "she was the gift that kept on giving, alas". | True, but this is not charity work. As the fates of his interviewees grow tragic, the book becomes compelling, especially with the entry of Carla, a resident of the floating city. Here is what Venkatesh wants – an embodiment of a New York where boundaries are permeable. Carla is a prostitute exotic enough for white clients; a latina without an "embarrassing" foreign accent; a woman not out of place at gallery openings in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. She couples a gargantuan appetite for drugs and drink with an unwavering faith she'll never be cut or beat up. For an ethnographer, "she was the gift that kept on giving, alas". |
| "Alas." Whose is this voice? It is such observations that give this work a darker tone. Wherever he is floating in NY, Venkatesh is not as far above his subjects as he might first appear, even if he has a Columbia staff card in his pocket. He is not so different from others labouring in this underground. "I felt so useless," he writes after witnessing one beating. "All I ever did was sit there and take notes." If NY is interconnecting threads, he is not only plucking and examining their quality, but is tripped up by and bound in them. | "Alas." Whose is this voice? It is such observations that give this work a darker tone. Wherever he is floating in NY, Venkatesh is not as far above his subjects as he might first appear, even if he has a Columbia staff card in his pocket. He is not so different from others labouring in this underground. "I felt so useless," he writes after witnessing one beating. "All I ever did was sit there and take notes." If NY is interconnecting threads, he is not only plucking and examining their quality, but is tripped up by and bound in them. |
| "Panic attack," he gasps on meeting Margot, a middle class woman working as a madam for college-educated paralegals. During the meeting, Venkatesh breaks down, tells her he feels as if he is on a speeding train. "I'm not even sure what kind of sociologist I want to be," he admits. "Drink some water," Margot says. They meet again and again. Margot fascinates Venkatesh – she too gathers the threads of an illicit community around her – but he is plagued by a fixation on executing a "formal study" of her life. | "Panic attack," he gasps on meeting Margot, a middle class woman working as a madam for college-educated paralegals. During the meeting, Venkatesh breaks down, tells her he feels as if he is on a speeding train. "I'm not even sure what kind of sociologist I want to be," he admits. "Drink some water," Margot says. They meet again and again. Margot fascinates Venkatesh – she too gathers the threads of an illicit community around her – but he is plagued by a fixation on executing a "formal study" of her life. |
| The book begins to resemble a distant cousin of Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage, another account of a man attempting a formal project. As is the case with Dyer, there is not only pleasure in watching the "formal" project stutter and stall, but an opportunity to approach the subject in an unconventional way. Sometimes this works beautifully. For instance, after evenings with some of the city's rich young elite, Venkatesh takes a couple of pages to describe the way they vomit: the matter-of-factness of the gesture. It's probably not suitable for formal papers. The observations are novelistic; an unexpectedly vivid image of a New York not many get to see. But Venkatesh cannot resist, so at the end of the paragraph we get: "Was this some kind of socioeconomic marker, perhaps even a form of personal expression? Were they throwing up all the expectations they'd been forced to swallow?" | The book begins to resemble a distant cousin of Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage, another account of a man attempting a formal project. As is the case with Dyer, there is not only pleasure in watching the "formal" project stutter and stall, but an opportunity to approach the subject in an unconventional way. Sometimes this works beautifully. For instance, after evenings with some of the city's rich young elite, Venkatesh takes a couple of pages to describe the way they vomit: the matter-of-factness of the gesture. It's probably not suitable for formal papers. The observations are novelistic; an unexpectedly vivid image of a New York not many get to see. But Venkatesh cannot resist, so at the end of the paragraph we get: "Was this some kind of socioeconomic marker, perhaps even a form of personal expression? Were they throwing up all the expectations they'd been forced to swallow?" |
| Such is the danger in the search for connections. But again and again Venkatesh's "failure" to produce formal research aids the book. He finds the process of interviewing prostitutes' clients difficult because "their loneliness was my loneliness". He can't take the interviews further, but the scenes with these men are as troubling as they are captivating. His inability to build up "numbers" of interviewees means we get more time with individuals: finally his drug dealer emerges as a brother and son; and the prostitutes who rent a small apartment for business bond over food. | Such is the danger in the search for connections. But again and again Venkatesh's "failure" to produce formal research aids the book. He finds the process of interviewing prostitutes' clients difficult because "their loneliness was my loneliness". He can't take the interviews further, but the scenes with these men are as troubling as they are captivating. His inability to build up "numbers" of interviewees means we get more time with individuals: finally his drug dealer emerges as a brother and son; and the prostitutes who rent a small apartment for business bond over food. |
| The smaller moments, the way he painstakingly details the exit strategies of escorts, are more effective than the big conclusions. Sex, he writes, "might be the secret thread drawing New Yorkers from all walks of life together". Sure, but this is the case in many other places too. And some conclusions seem to work against his image of a floating city. He points out that unlike the low-income workers of previous generations, many of his interviewees aren't joining unions. Thus they could only float for a while before capsizing. "As the new century began in NYC, nearly one in three of these recent immigrants lived in poverty." | The smaller moments, the way he painstakingly details the exit strategies of escorts, are more effective than the big conclusions. Sex, he writes, "might be the secret thread drawing New Yorkers from all walks of life together". Sure, but this is the case in many other places too. And some conclusions seem to work against his image of a floating city. He points out that unlike the low-income workers of previous generations, many of his interviewees aren't joining unions. Thus they could only float for a while before capsizing. "As the new century began in NYC, nearly one in three of these recent immigrants lived in poverty." |
| If the big picture is sometimes blurred, the details of the individual lives are often well observed, Venkatesh's own included. Our narrator is as flawed as the rest, thankfully – another strand in the messy, engaging tapestry of this new New York. Near the end he writes an outline for a film and submits it to one of the rich-kid interviewees. It is not fiction. He uses the story of one of the prostitutes we have already heard from: "Carla's story," he writes, "starting with the beating and then her push into the escort business." The young man is pleased with it and wants to pay but Venkatesh requests access instead of money. "With that, I knew I could eventually get him to co-operate," he writes. "Despite his cloak of cynicism … he was as susceptible as most of us are to Carl Jung's great maxim: the desire to reveal is greater than the desire to conceal." Indeed, but the subjects here are not the only revealers. | If the big picture is sometimes blurred, the details of the individual lives are often well observed, Venkatesh's own included. Our narrator is as flawed as the rest, thankfully – another strand in the messy, engaging tapestry of this new New York. Near the end he writes an outline for a film and submits it to one of the rich-kid interviewees. It is not fiction. He uses the story of one of the prostitutes we have already heard from: "Carla's story," he writes, "starting with the beating and then her push into the escort business." The young man is pleased with it and wants to pay but Venkatesh requests access instead of money. "With that, I knew I could eventually get him to co-operate," he writes. "Despite his cloak of cynicism … he was as susceptible as most of us are to Carl Jung's great maxim: the desire to reveal is greater than the desire to conceal." Indeed, but the subjects here are not the only revealers. |
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