"On the wire for better or worse"--Pete's Review of Let The Great World Spin

'To be honest, I didn't want to read this book. I'd been to the World Trade Center before and after the fall, and also knew a lot about Philippe Petit's tightrope walk on August 7, 1974. I'd read his 'To Reach the Clouds' and watched the documentary 'Man on Wire.' And, like many others, I even painted a version of the scene. So I guess you could call that a moderate obsession. I'm not sure why the tightrope walk made such an impact. To some it was just a stunt and meant nothing at all. But to me, nothing quite like it has happened before or since. And I thought I was done with it. Enough. But as a bookseller I see that book every day, that image of a little man in the sky. I notice that shiny gold sticker saying 'National Book Award Winner' and I just can't resist. I wanted to put it down during Book One. It struck me as too dreary and the chapter too long. Same for the chapter after except that I noticed the writing was very, very good. And then finally I'm in, I'm on the wire for better or for worse. It turned out to be a wise decision to press on. The author gives Philippe just a small part, which makes perfect sense because very few witnessed the tightrope walk or could make any sense of it. But some people did see it, and their lives touched other lives and so on and so forth. These are their stories: The prostitutes, the pimps, the affluent on Park Avenue, the hippies, the priests, the judges and the cops. The author deftly interweaves their lives around each other during a sticky August in post-Vietnam, Watergate-era New York City. It was like Pottersville in 'It's a Wonderful Life.' Not much was going right then, nothing really, except for a tiny speck in the sky, a little victory for man over gravity. He didn't fall when everything else had. And the author's characters are pushed to the limit and they triumph as well, just by staying out there on the wire. Let the Great World Spin! It will anyway. "

Pete, a gifted artist in addition to being one heck of a bookseller, ended up making a painting inspired by this book.