TALES OF LOHR: COLSON WHITEHEAD'S "THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK"

A Pulitzer winner's meditations on his city, and mine

I feel very sorry, in a way, for anyone who finds themselves trapped in a conversation with me over the next six weeks and change. On October 6, I depart for what has been, since 2021, an annual autumn tradition for me: A week spent in New York City, where I enjoy sights fresh and familiar, marinate myself to the eyeballs in art and live entertainment, savor cuisine both high-toned and street-easy, and basically spend seven days living as I would if money was no object, the world was my oyster, and that world existed entirely within the confines of the City That Never Sleeps. My flight and hotel stay have been booked since the late spring, but this week I truly began solidifying my leisure plans for my impending visit, securing dining reservations (including a table at Keen’s, the old-school steakhouse the late beloved chef Anthony Bourdain counted among his favorite eateries in the city), arranging tickets for museums and entertainment events (most notably a seat for one of the final preview performances of the new Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, starring Jim Parsons and Katie Holmes)…and, of course, talking, to anyone within earshot, about my plans for the trip, the highlights of my previous visits, and my general boundless enthusiasm for all the marvelous amusements and unique experiences the city has to offer. Which is, by and large, in no way a change of pace from my usual frequent commentary about my earlier sojourns to New York. Simply put: If you find yourself in a conversation with me, before too many minutes pass, you are going to be, almost inevitably, in a conversation about New York City. For much of my adolescence, I had harbored a youthful, movies-and-jazz-nurtured fascination with the place, one that was sharply curtailed, in the-grapes-are-probably-sour-anyway soul-protecting fashion, after I was nominated for but failed to receive a full-ride film studies undergraduate scholarship to NYU, the only way in which I would have been able to afford attending the school. As a result, at this time just three years ago, I had never even set foot in Manhattan, let alone any of the other five boroughs. Now, three (soon to be four) visits later, I wax rhapsodic about the place at the drop of a hat, and with such a proprietary sense of affection you’d think I was Peter Stuyvesant.