In the Place to Be

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Trebay, a columnist and editor at the Village Voice, is a good writer, a gutsy man and a mensch, but his columns arranged here in loose sections about people, odd commodities, events, and the like, have a certain grinding similarity. Since 1981, Trebay has watched and listened to New Yorkers, opening up parts of the city generally beyond his readers' purview-which often seems to mean either the Lower East Side or Morrisania in the South Bronx. Over the course of a decade and a half, themes recur. Taken separately, Trebay's five visits to oases of art and flowers are sweet; clumped together as ``Pangloss City,'' they seem saccharine. The same goes for stories of the stresses and strains of families in ``Kinship.'' One at a time, they are sad-in a group, they tend to lose their individuality and, hence, their affectiveness. The best sections are those that afford the greatest mix-``The Sweet Sell,'' in which New Yorkers take advantage of everything available for purchase, or ``High Times,'' in which citizens entertain themselves. The truth is, these human-interest stories are worth dipping into, but only those innocents who don't already take New York weirdness for granted will find it particularly enlightening. In this case, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. (Nov.)