Overview

A New York Times Notable Book Whether Lee Stringer is describing ""God's corner"" as he calls 42nd Street, or his friend Suzy, a hooker and ""past due tourist"" whose infant child he sometimes babysits, whether he is recounting his experiences at Street News, where he began hawking the newspaper for a living wage, then wrote articles, and served for a time as muckraking senior editor, whether it is his adventures in New York's infamous Tombs jail, or performing community service, or sleeping in the tunnels below Grand Central Station by night and collecting cans by day, this is a book rich with small acts of kindness, humor and even heroism alongside the expected violence and desperation of life on the street. There is always room, Stringer writes, ""amid the costume"" jewel glitter...for one more diamond in the rough."" Two events rise over Grand Central Winter like sentinels- Stringer's discovery of crack cocaine and his catching the writing bug. Between these two very different yet oddly similar activities, Lee's life unwound itself, during the 1980s, and took the shape of an odyssey, an epic struggle to find meaning and happiness in arid times. He eventually beat the first addiction with help from a treatment program. The second addiction, writing, has hold of him still. Among the many accomplishments of this book is that Stringer is able to convey something of the vitality and complexity of a down-and-out life. The reader walks away from it humming its melody, one that is more wise than despairing, less about the shame we feel when confronted with a picture of those less fortunate, and more about the joy we feel when we experience our shared humanity.

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9781888363579

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Reviews

From stories about flim-flamming clerics prying on the homeless, to the streetwise Romeo who wants to make the prostitute mother of his child an 'honest woman' ( I can't believe it, [she] even charged me to go to bed with her on our honeymoon night ), to the manipulations of being on the Geraldo show, Stringer possesses a sharp eye for the street and the rich, sagacious talent of a storyteller. -Publishers Weekly Stringer readily admits to his former addiction and even celebrates its simple sweetness; you collect enough returnable cans to buy a hit, you get high, you crash and start looking for more cans. Like Dorothy Parker cradling a martini, he makes no apologies. But Stringer's angle on Manhattan is not from a table at the Algonquin; it is straight up from underneath. -John Jiler, New York Times Book Review

From stories about flim-flamming clerics prying on the homeless, to the streetwise Romeo who wants to make the prostitute mother of his child an 'honest woman' ( I can't believe it, [she] even charged me to go to bed with her on our honeymoon night ), to the manipulations of being on the Geraldo show, Stringer possesses a sharp eye for the street and the rich, sagacious talent of a storyteller. -Publishers Weekly Stringer readily admits to his former addiction and even celebrates its simple sweetness; you collect enough returnable cans to buy a hit, you get high, you crash and start looking for more cans. Like Dorothy Parker cradling a martini, he makes no apologies. But Stringer's angle on Manhattan is not from a table at the Algonquin; it is straight up from underneath. -John Jiler, New York Times Book Review

There is an electrifying moment early in this book. Late one night a would-be yuppie blunders onto the access ramp between Grand Central Station in New York and the subway, and finds himself confronting 20 or 30 street people huddled on the cold concrete. 'Oh. My. God!' he moans in three succinct, trembling syllables. This entire wonderful book is such a moment of sudden, shocking revelation. Stringer lost his brother, his partner, his work, his home; suddenly he was living on the streets nursing a habit and making a precarious living by collecting discarded drinks cans. His home was a crawl space in the lower depths of Grand Central Station, and it was there he found a pencil and an old exercise book and started writing. He wrote naturally, simply and unemotionally about his life and the way he lived, the prison cells and drugs and danger and cold that are the inevitable companions to life on the street. His writing would eventually take him from the streets and back into the sort of society we are mostly familiar with, but not before he had given us this stunning, revelatory portrait of a life lived out in the open yet invisible to us all. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

LEE STRINGER's journey from childhood homelessness in the ’60s, to adult homelessness in the ’80s, to his present career as a writer and lecturer, as told in Sleepaway School and Grand Central Winter, is one of the great odysseys of contemporary American life and letters. Stringer is the only board member of Project Renewal who is also a former patient of the facility. He is the two-time recipient of the Washington Irving Award and, in 2005, a Lannan Foundation Residency. He is a former editor of and columnist for Street News. His essays and articles have appeared in a variety of other publications, including the Nation, the New York Times, and Newsday. He lives in Mamaroneck, New York, where he also serves on the board of the Mamaroneck Public Libraries.

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