Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me

Title: Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me
Author: Bill Hayes
Memoir: 1701785
ISBN: 9781620404935
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2017
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Edition: First Edition
Number of Pages: 304
Section: Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
Condition Note: Excellent, unmarked copy with little wear and tight binding. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description:

Amazon's Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2017 List

A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks.

A beautifully written once-in-a-lifetime book, about love, about life, soul, and the wonderful loving genius Oliver Sacks, and New York, and laughter and all of creation.--Anne Lamott

Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.

And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance--I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life, he tells Hayes early on--is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015).Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes's distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.