Volume 48, Number 20 · December 20, 2001
Mean Streets
By Luc Sante
The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
by Herbert Asbury, with a foreword by Jorge Luis Borges
Thunder's Mouth Press, 366 pp., $14.95 (paper)
The Gangs of New York, like a medieval geography, is in effect a collection of travelers' tales. The travelers, passing through dangerous and exotic territory, are shocked, stultified, disoriented by what they see. Upon returning home they babble inarticulate reports, composed largely of adjectives, about hippogriffs and sea monsters and men whose heads grow below their shoulders. Some of this may be hallucination, but it is more likely a way of expressing sights for which there are no words in the language.
Review, 2572 words
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