Reading Groups

New York: Surface and Subterranea with Matilda Lin Berke

5 Sessions Saturdays, 1:00 pm EDT - 2:30 pm EDT October 5, 2024 to January 11, 2025

The Center for Fiction

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The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
10/5, 11/2, 11/23, 12/21, 1/11
In Person at The Center for Fiction

In New York, every structure has its converse; exterior and interior, mask and face, the theater and its double. As a locus for the metropolitan confluence of ambition, power, and capital, the city physically stages the tenuous relationship between surface and subterranea.

This course tracks the ways the forms of New York’s social architecture hold and disguise some feelings while simultaneously producing feelings that masquerade as intrinsic aesthetic forms. Rem Koolhaas’s seminal theory of “Manhattanism” grounds our reading of three novels that articulate the costumes and consequences of cosmopolitan performance, from the 80s up through today. By tracing underground networks of desire, anxiety, and influence, we will derive a new understanding of appearances—and vice versa. The course will also incorporate auxiliary resources from Mark Lombardi and Julie Mehretu to Gossip Girl (2007).

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas

p. 9-11 (“Manifesto” through “Ghostwriter”)
p.18-27 (“Prediction” through “Sphere”)
p. 82-87 (“The Frontier in the Sky” through “Theorem”)
p. 100-101 (“Automonument” through “Lobotomy”)
p. 132-144 (“The Lives of a Block: The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the Empire State Building” through “Displacement”)

What to expect from this reading group: Although the group will be more structured in the first few sessions to provide a solid theoretical framework for our thinking (and properly parse our introductory text), it will open up to a more conversational format as we gain familiarity with our lens of study and the materials at hand.

Book List:

The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Rent Boy by Gary Indiana

Capacity: 20

Led by

Matilda Lin Berke

Matilda Lin Berke

Matilda Lin Berke is from Los Angeles. Now she lives in New York. She writes theory for Spike art magazine; you can find her short fiction and poetry in various places. She is working on a collection of machine essays; a novel, Industry Plant; and “Girlblogging,” a column at Filmmaker magazine.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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