Everyone is Watching (23 page)

Read Everyone is Watching Online

Authors: Megan Bradbury

B
ACKGROUND
R
EADING

How the Other Half Lives
, Dover Publications, London, 1971 – Jacob Riis

Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World
, Routledge, London, 2008 – Miriam Greenberg

Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places
, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010 – Sharon Zukin

Between Ocean and City
, Columbia University Press, New York, 2003 – Lawrence and Carol Kaplan

City of Eros: NYC, Prostitution and the Commercialisation of Sex, 1790–1920
, W. W. Norton, London, 1994 – Timothy J. Gilfoyle

Fragmented Urban Images: The American City in Modern Fiction from Stephen Crane to Thomas Pynchon
, P. Lang, New York, 1991 – Gerd Hurm

Imperial City: The Rise and Rise of New York
, Ulverscroft, 1989 – Geoffrey Moorhouse

Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World
, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1991 – William R. Taylor

Leadership
, Time Warner, London, 2003 – Rudolph Giuliani

Pornography Without Prejudice: A Reply to Objectors
, Abelard-Schuman, London, 1972 – Geoff L. Simons

Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy and Obscenity in New York City, 1909–1945
, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000 – Andrea Friedman

Public Sex/Gay Space
, Columbia University Press, Chichester, New York, 1999 – William Leap

Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife 1885–1940
, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009 – Chad Heap

Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography
, Bantam, London, 1982 – ed. Laura Lederer

The Assassination of New York
, Verso, London, 1993 – Robert Fitch

The Disappearance of Objects: New York and the Rise of the Postmodern City
, Yale University Press, London, 2009 – Joshua Shannon

The Skyscraper
, Allen Lane, London, 1982 – Paul Goldberger

The Times Square Story
, W.W. Norton, London, 1998 – Geoffrey O’Brien

Times Square Red Times Square Blue
, New York University Press, London, 1999 – Samuel R. Delany

Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon
, MIT Press, London, 2001 – Lynne B. Sagalyn

Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol
, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979 – Alan Trachtenberg

On Photography
, Penguin, London, 1979 – Susan Sontag

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
, Flamingo, London, 1984 – Roland Barthes

The Denial of Death
, Free Press, London, 1973 – Ernest Becker

Illness as Metaphor
and
AIDS and its Metaphors
, Penguin, London, 2002 – Susan Sontag

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000 – Edwin Burrows

The City That Never Was
, Viking, London, 1988 – Rebecca Shanor

New York 1930
(Rizzoli, New York 1987)
/1960
(Taschen, Koln, 1997)
/2000
(Monacelli Press, New York, 2006) – Robert A. M. Stern

Twenty Minutes in Manhattan
, Reaktion Books, London, 2009 – Michael Sorkin

After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City
, Routledge, London, 2002 – Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin

The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals and the Redevelopment of the Inner City
, Ohio State University Press, 1993 – Joel Schwartz

Urban Theory and Urban Experience: Encountering the City
, Routledge, London, 2004 – Simon Parker

The Urban Lifeworld: Formation, Perception and Representation
, Routledge, London, 2002 – Peter Madsen and Richard Plunz

Starting From Zero: Reconstructing Downtown New York
, Routledge, London, 2003 – Michael Sorkin

The New Deal and the Unemployed: The View from New York City
, Bucknell University Press, 1979 – Barbara Blumberg

This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death
, Fourth Estate, London, 1996 – Harold Brodkey

AIDS, Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism
, MIT Press, London, 1988 – Douglas Crimp

F
ILMS

Video of Spanish television documentary on Robert Mapplethorpe, 1980s, box 196, Robert Mapplethorpe Papers, J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Whitney Opening with Robert Mapplethorpe, 1988, Robert Mapplethorpe Papers, J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Robert Mapplethorpe with Peter Van de Klashorst, 1984, box 196, Robert Mapplethorpe Papers, J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Black, White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe
by James Crump, 2007

Arena
, by Nigel Finch, 1988, box 196, Robert Mapplethorpe Papers, J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Lady
, by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1984, box 197, Robert Mapplethorpe Papers, J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Dream of Life
, by Steven Sebring, 2008

Mr Mackridge Interviews Mr Moses
,
1963, 01144, New York World’s Fair 1964–65 Corporation Records, New York Public Library, New York City

The Man Who Built New York
, 1963, 00642, New York World’s Fair 1964–65 Corporation Records, New York Public Library, New York City

New York New York: The Fair Face of Robert Moses,
00668, New York World’s Fair 1964–65 Corporation Records, New York Public Library, New York City

Cruising
directed by William Friedkin, 1980

S
OUND
R
ECORDINGS

Unisphere Presentation, 1964, 01175, New York World’s Fair 1964–65 Corporation Records, New York Public Library, New York City

Press Conference on Arterials, 1963, 01123, New York World’s Fair 1964–65 Corporation Records, New York Public Library, New York City

The Coral Sea
by Patti Smith, 2008

Patti Smith: The Classic Interview
, 2009

O
NLINE
S
OURCES

1853 NYC World’s Fair exhibition programme

‘Off the Shelf’, article in the
New Yorker
, 10 October 2011

‘The Other Mapplethorpe’ article in the
Observer
, 2007

ZIP Magazine
Interview with Edward Mapplethorpe (YouTube)

‘The Eye of Sam Wagstaff’ by Bruce Hainley,
Artforum
, April 1997

‘American Experience: The World That Moses Built’, PBS documentary (You Tube)

1964/65 World’s Fair Futurama Ride film (YouTube)

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

I
NTERVIEWS CONDUCTED

Patricia Morrisroe, author, biographer of Robert Mapplethorpe

Sarah Forbes, Curator, Museum of Sex, New York City

Yona Backer, Founder of Third Streaming, Agent of The Alvin Baltrop Trust, New York City

A
RCHIVES
/M
USEUMS
/E
XHIBITIONS VISITED

Third Streaming, home of Alvin Baltrop estate, New York City

Robert Moses Papers, New York World’s Fair 1964–65 Corporation Records, Walt Whitman Papers, New York Public Library, New York City

Robert Mapplethorpe Papers, Sam Wagstaff Papers, J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

Robert Mapplethorpe Collection, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

‘Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s’, Barbican, London, 2011

‘Robert Mapplethorpe: Nightwork’, Alison Jacques Gallery, London, 2011

‘Ballad of Sexual Dependency’, Whitney Museum, New York City, 2013

‘Hard Times’ Tour, Tenement Museum, New York City, 2008 & 2013

High Line Park, New York City, 2013

Museum of the City of New York, New York City, 2013 Museum of Sex, New York City, 2013

Times Square Visitor Center, New York City, 2013

Acknowledgements

I wouldn’t have been able to write this book without the love and support of my husband, best friend and writing partner, Ben Smart, with whom I can accomplish
anything.

Thank you to everyone at Picador and Pan Macmillan for welcoming me so warmly. Thank you to Paul Baggaley and Sophie Jonathan for their passionate belief, intelligent editing, and for making
this a better book. Thank you also to Nicholas Blake for his attention to detail, to Lucie Cuthbertson-Twiggs for her ideas, and to Ami Smithson for her exquisite artwork.

Thank you to Sophie Lambert for her inexhaustible faith, determination, and friendship, and to the foreign rights team at Conville & Walsh for their hard work.

Thank you to Mum and Dad for their encouragement, support and belief, and for never suggesting I ‘get a proper job’.

Thank you to Elsie Jenkins – reader, writer, thinker – she showed me the ropes.

Thank you to Kirsty, Rhiannon, Karl, Jude, Eda, Gary, Patricia, Alan, Liz, Rachel, David, Rosie and Jacca for their unconditional love, which has sustained me.

To my fellow lister and bosom friend, Kirsten Irving – thank you for championing me on a weekly basis, for pointing out all the things I have done, and for encouraging me to complete all
the things still left to do.

Thank you to all who read the book in its early stages: Lauren Frankel, Nick DeSpain, Joe Dunthorne, Tom Benn, Mischa Pearlman and Tommy Karshan. Thank you to Phil Cooper for his beautiful
designs and to Armando Celayo for his advice.

To the best friends a woman could have: Daisy Bourne, Beth Settle, Alex Ivey and Shubhangi Swarup – thank you for the pep talks, and for making me laugh.

Thank you to Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams for giving me the confidence to write this to begin with.

Thank you to the best teachers I’ve ever had, Andrew Cowan and Ian Hinde, who taught me the art of self-belief.

Thank you to Jean McNeil and Ali Smith for making me realize what I could do, for their support and encouragement, and for their incredible books, which have inspired me.

Thank you to Val Taylor, Michèle Roberts, Patricia Duncker, David Flusfeder, and Bernardine Evaristo for steering me onto the right road, and thank you to Cathi Unsworth for ensuring I
stay on it.

I’d like to thank the following institutions for allowing me to access their archives and collections during my research for this book: thank you to the National
Galleries of Scotland; the National Library of Scotland; the Edinburgh Public Library; the New York Public Library; the Getty Research Institute; the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; New
York’s Museum of Sex; and Third Streaming.

Thank you to Patricia Morrisroe, Sarah Forbes, Yona Backer and Isabel Vincent for their valuable time.

Thank you to Will Boast and Johnny Levin for providing me with a home in America.

I am also indebted to the many biographers, historians, art critics and urban commentators (listed on pages 268 –76) whose work contributed to my research, and without whom this book
couldn’t have been written.

I have been lucky enough to have had feedback, professional advice and letters of support from many individuals and organizations. Thank you to Martin Pick, Chris Gribble, Jon
Cook, George Szirtes, Kevin Conroy-Scott, Briony Bax, everyone at
Ambit
, the Writers Centre Norwich, and the board of the Charles Pick Fellowship.

Thank you to the University of East Anglia, which has nurtured my writing over many years.

I am also grateful to Arts Council England for their generous grant.

Thank you to those whose work has helped me to indulge my obsession with New York City during the writing of this book: Lou Reed, Woody Allen, and Tom Meyers and Greg Young
from the Bowery Boys (www.boweryboyshistory.com).

Thank you to Todd Haynes, whose film,
I’m Not There
, provided the light bulb moment.

Thank you to Don DeLillo, whose books have inspired me and made me a better writer.

Thank you to the artists whose work lit a fire in my belly: Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Nan Goldin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Richard Serra, Alvin Baltrop, Jacob Riis, Steven Sebring, Edward
Mapplethorpe, Edward J. Steichen, David Wojnarowicz, and Dexter Dalwood.

And thank you to the subjects at the heart of it all: to New York City, which opened my eyes, and to Robert Mapplethorpe, Edmund White, Robert Moses and Walt Whitman, who showed me which way to
look.

Megan Bradbury
was born in the United States and grew up in Britain. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. In 2012 she was awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship at UEA and in 2013 she won an Escalator Literature Award and a Grant for the Arts to help fund the completion of Everyone is Watching, which is her first novel.

First published 2016 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2016 by Picador

Other books

Mine by Georgia Beers
Trust by Aubrey St. Clair
Dragonhold (Book 2) by Brian Rathbone
One Night Stand by Cohen, Julie
Lord Beast by Ashlyn Montgomery
Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell
Lost Chances by Nicholson, C.T.
The Windfall by Ellie Danes, Lily Knight
Follow Me Through Darkness by Danielle Ellison