New York makes so much noise about itself, discusses itself so endlessly on its streets and in its bars, lends its name so freely to magazines and websites and newspapers, that the novelist foolhardy enough to engage with this nonstop tantrum of a place has little choice but to turn himself or herself into a noise-comprehender (The Fortress of Solitude, Netherland) or a noise-amplifier (Herzog, Mr. Sammler’s Planet, The Puttermesser Papers). I wasn’t aware that a third path exists until I read Teju Cole’s Open City—a novel that simply blots out the noise in favor of moments of eerie tranquility and solitude, moments than can be achieved without much effort if, like the thirty-something narrator of the book, you are willing to ditch the rush-hour roar and enter a museum, a classical concert, or the house of an aging friend.
