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Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (2010)

by Rebecca Solnit(Favorite Author)

4.19 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0520262492 (ISBN13: 9780520262492)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

University of California Press

review 1: This is an atlas in the same way One Hundred Years of Solitude is a story about a village. Which is to say it covers so much history, in so many crazy ways, and is so unlike any other story or map you’ve ever seen, that it becomes very hard to summarize. Not for everyone, and not a good starting place to learn about the city. But nevertheless something I love and think is worth flipping through for anyone trying to find the stories that can bring a city to life.
review 2: The book drew me in with its artwork and promise of new visions of the familiar. The art - the maps and other illustrations - are all lovely and well placed given the text either selected by or written by Ms. Solnit. The work fails, at least for me, by attempting to infuse too much meaning, ... moreor too much feeling into an event/place. This was bluntly true with the essay on evictions in the Tenderloin and the "what happened to al the black folks" essays/maps. The trouble is how Ms. Solnit accepts/speaks as a transplant to San Francisco. At times, this brings value as is wont to happen when an outsider lets the native have a second look. But, as a transplant of multiple decades, (she's been a resident since she was 20) she falls too often into explanations of why she came/why she stayed. It colors her text with platitudes and whining which in essence come off to me as "i did not originate here, but I've got the left-liberal politics to fit in" or "see, I'm one of you now." Tone it down please! The reader is not in to revoker her residency or challenge her right to stay. Please stop trying so hard to prove you belong. It hurts!! less

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