Jan Morris, “Contact: A Book of Encounters.” New York: W.W. Norton 202pp. $23.95.
Washington Times, April 28, 2010
Reviewed by Martin Rubin
Strictly speaking, it is an oxymoron to speak of cities having a personality. Yet it has become a commonplace to use the word not merely for them but for a whole range of things from dogs to ocean liners—none of whom are persons! If anyone has made capturing that essential quality of the urban her own particular province it is Jan Morris, for in volume after volume, she has penned word portraits of cities all over the globe. No one else has quite her capacity for zeroing in on the character of a city, an uncanny combination of its atmosphere, its affect, its unique features, the multitudinous parts somehow making an ineffable but true whole. . . .
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