New York City has a reputation for glamor and excitement, but for the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants, everyday life is a very different matter.  For them life in “America’s greatest city” is a life of exhausting bustle, disgusting filth, and constant, befouling exposure to the most degraded, ubiqui-tous, and therefore inescapable vulgarity. In these short stories the lives of New Yorkers, from the hopeless office worker to the struggling artist, from the retired senior citizen to the newly arrived immigrant, from the worriedly unemployed to the unconsciously wealthy, are depicted with a fresh and rare honesty. The much-vaunted “culture” of the city is shown to be what it often is: a veneer beneath which a snapping, feral barbarousness is ever on the verge of breaking out, and sometimes does so.