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Adam Gopnik's Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York recounts the author's return to New York City after years of living in Paris. The book contains Gopnik's quirky observations of everyday life in New York, including its architecture. The title refers to the children's gate of Central Park but also to how Gopnik is seeing the city anew through the eyes of his children. The extent to which being a New Yorker is hard-wired into your DNA from birth is dramatically illustrated through Gopnik's children Olivia and Luke. Yet Gopnik also suggests that to be a New Yorker is to be a perpetual child, always in love with the size and the wonder of the city.
In one essay entitled "Bumping into Mr. Ravioli," Gopnik details how even children in New York are so over-scheduled that his daughter's imaginary friend seldom has time to play with her. Charley Ravioli barely has time to...
"He canceled lunch -- again," she sighs (Gopnik 157). Olivia's personality highlights many of the paradoxes of New York City childhood. On one hand, Olivia has a precociously large vocabulary (at least in Gopnik's presentation of her) and seems very sophisticated in her expression of her wants and needs. On the other hand, the drama that ensues over the death of a pet store fish has an absurdly heightened and tragic nature. While this is the humor of the piece, it also highlights the degree to which New Yorkers are insulated from 'natural' things like grass, dogs, and larger animals, except in the narrow confines of areas like Central Park.
This combination of world-weariness and awe is also seen in Gopnik's presentation of the city itself. "I can walk if I want to the Guggenheim if I want to, these days, but in my mind it has become…
Work Cited
Gopnik, Adam. Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York. Vintage: New York, 2007.
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