New York beats Tokyo as city most often destroyed in fiction
A friend just forwarded me this "Very Short List" review of a new non-fiction book on the destruction of New York City in popular culture and all that this might imply about our fears and suppressed wishes.
Here's the first paragraph, just to whet your appetite:
Like it or not, New York City’s annihilation - by fire, plague, asteroid, atomic bomb, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man - has always been a pop-cultural cliché. As Max Page puts it at the start of his new book, The City’s End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction: “It seems that every generation has had its own reasons for destroying New York.”
Looks like this might actually be worth a read.
Here's the first paragraph, just to whet your appetite:
Like it or not, New York City’s annihilation - by fire, plague, asteroid, atomic bomb, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man - has always been a pop-cultural cliché. As Max Page puts it at the start of his new book, The City’s End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction: “It seems that every generation has had its own reasons for destroying New York.”
Looks like this might actually be worth a read.