| Going into the City | |
| Author: | Robert Christgau |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Memoir |
| Published: | 2015 |
| Publisher: | Dey Street Books |
| Pages: | 367 |
| Isbn: | 978-0-06-223879-5 |
Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man is a 2015 memoir by American music critic Robert Christgau.
According to NPR, the memoir "takes the reader through the music that inspired [Christgau's] career, the women who sharpened his work over the years, and a childhood spent in Queens, where he learned from the DJ who gave rock 'n' roll its name."[1] Christgau also pays tribute to the influence of his wife and fellow writer, Carola Dibbell. "Her aesthetic responsiveness was unending", he wrote. "No one affected my writing like Carola."[2]
Writing for the New York Times, Dave Itzkoff gave the book a favorable review, saying, among other things, that the chapter about Christgau and his wife's difficulties conceiving a child was "surely one of the book’s most touching sections."[3] Henry Hauser of Consequence of Sound compared the book favorably to Christgau's reviews, saying they were both "dense, tight, and brimming with insight."[4] Writing for The Guardian, Joanna Scutts said that in the book, Christgau "embraces" the challenge of "saying something new and distinctive...with undimming energy."[5]