“Recapturing New York from the barbarianism in our midst won’t be an easy chore.” Too true. Herbert London makes the observation in the final essay in Broken Apple: New York City in the 1980s (Transaction, $24.95). He has no illusions about grand political solutions. In Gotham? Forget it. In “A Citizens’ Campaign to Reconstitute New York” Mr. London offers a dozen simple steps to improve the quality of metropolitan life. My favorites are: matrons for movies theaters and billy clubs for cops. As all New Yorkers long to say with authority to our rowdy fellow citizens: Shut up! Or else.
London loves New York. He was briefly in this year’s mayoral race, and is a dean at NYU. The essays in this collection were first published in the local papers. As he says, not bad for a kid from Coney Island. Not bad is right, and, in fact, many of these essays are superb. I rarely find collections of such short pieces satisfying; reading them is like looking at the scenery along Fifth Avenue from the window of a speeding taxi. And the weakness of these essays— ignoring the fact that not every one can be great—is their brevity. Herb London is a man who can develop ideas in argument, and the three-hundred-word format barely lets him get started. On the other hand, such economic prose does have its virtues. In “New York’s Socialist Ethos,” London succinctly devastates the city’s rent-control policies, which result in “two kinds of city dwellers: one leading a discounted existence and the other paying through the nose for the privilege of living here.” We live in a “mean-spirited place, living proof that socialism promotes envy.” New York, New York. If you can make it here, Mr. London jokes, you’ll make it anywhere, namely, “Moscow, Warsaw, Leipzig, or Prague.” Broken Apple is recommended for all urban dwellers.
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