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LOW LIFE
by
Luc Sante

Rendered in impeccable prose, packed to the gills with lists of names and places and acts so bizarre that they resemble Burroughsian poetry, bursting with obsessive fervor, LOW LIFE is more like a cathedral than a book, and it’s impossible to read only once. Sante makes his enthusiasm for New York’s sordid history (largely Victorian and prior) into a communicable obsession, like cooties for your brain. Flip to any page, and immediately you’re lost in multiple examples of awe-inspiring endeavor—most impressive of which is the lassoing of all New York’s archival sin and squalor into a single rollicking fever dream. One of the best books about New York that you will ever read, this is historical spelunkery at its most ecstatic.