"A Missed Opportunity to Crack Open a Hothouse Milieu"

"Mr. Christgau was born in 1942; his father was a New York City fireman. Reading 'Peter Pan' was an early influence, he says, because it 'synced up perfectly with everything I knew: the proposition that being a kid for life was a worthy ambition.' As a teenager he listened to the disc jockey Alan Freed on WINS and soon became obsessed with the Top 40. About the rock 'n' roll of that era, Mr. Freed's show taught him something essential: that 'cover artists were white and the originals were by Negroes.' He began to go into the city, as this book's title has it, to buy records."


In The New York Times, Dwight Garner reviews Robert Christgau's Going Into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man.


In Salon, Scott Timberg interviews Christgau.