New York:
Capital of the 20th Century
by Kenneth Goldsmith
Verso ©2015
MAPPLETHORPE
pages 501-537
Kenneth Goldsmith’s Capital: New York, Capital of the 20th Century (Verso, 2015) is composed entirely of quotations — histories, memoirs, newspaper articles, government documents, even emails — assembled into a mosaic portrait of the city, modeled on Walter Benjamin’s unfinished Arcades Project. Among its thematic chapters (Sex, Central Park, Commodity, Gentrification) is a 36-page section devoted to Robert Mapplethorpe, drawing on Jack Fritscher’s writing as Mapplethorpe’s Drummer editor and the author of Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera.
New York: Capital of the 20th Century is the work of the conceptual writer Kenneth Goldsmith, who built the book entirely from found text rather than new prose. Its 36-page Mapplethorpe section, pages 501 to 537, draws on the writing of Jack Fritscher, Robert Mapplethorpe’s Drummer editor and the author of the memoir Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera. Fritscher’s account of his lover and the photographer’s career thus sits beside histories, memoirs, newspaper articles, government documents, and emails in Goldsmith’s portrait of the city.