Alone at the Wheel: Driving in Manhattan

"The roadster glided through traffic as easily, gracefully as a fish swimming downstream, the first lights of evening sliding backward over the long, gray hood."

~ Winifred Van Duzer, The Good Bad Girl (1926)

Yeild to the...? City Street, NYC, via GIPHY

Faith Baldwin of Brooklyn

New York and the (Aspirations, Dreams) Lives of Women: Faith Baldwin

"Romance novel" is a useless phrase. Let's just stick with "novel," shall we? And thus we can take a look at one of the United States' most successful writers: Faith Baldwin (1893–1978). Over the course of her career, she published roughly 100 novels, wrote for various magazines and newspapers, and saw some of her novels turned into films (eg, Wife Versus Secretary 1936). Her first published piece (a poem) appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1907 (see below). Her first novel was published in 1921, and her final novel appeared in 1977. "She writes about people you know," reads the copy from one of her novels. "The girl next door, the young man who rides down on the elevator with you, the people in your office." Baldwin's novels focused on women's lives, their relationships, dreams, families, marriages, careers, and challenges of the modern world. The setting for the vast majority of her novels: Why, New York, of course! Brooklyn, to be exact.

NYC: Being a Guide Book as Well as a City

Like novels set in NYC, guide books offer a fascinating experience; they are a means to vicariously visit the city and, in essence, see the city through another set of eyes.

A guide it itself a literary creation; a rendition of the city at a certain time and through a certain point of view.

Like novels, they tell stories of the city.