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Grand Central Winter | 
 enlarge | Author: Lee Stringer
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy Used: $0.71
You Save: $12.24 (95%)
New (22) Used (60) Collectible (5) from $0.71
Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 227182
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0671036548
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.5
EAN: 9780671036546
ASIN: 0671036548
Publication Date: November 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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Amazon.com
Curled deep in his burrow in a Grand Central Station crawlspace, Lee Stringer--ragged, homeless, addicted to crack--is digging around for something he can use to clean his crack pipe. Finally his fingers latch around "some sort of smooth straight stick": a pencil. In the days that follow, he carries it with him wherever he goes. "So I have this pencil with me all the time and then one day I'm sitting there in my hole with nothing to smoke and nothing to do and I pull the pencil out just to look at the film of residue stuck to the sides--you do that sort of thing when you don't have any shit--and it dawns on me that it's a pencil. I mean it's got a lead in it and all, and you can write with the thing." And so that's what he does. "Pretty soon I forget all about hustling and getting a hit. I'm scribbling like a maniac; heart pumping, adrenaline rushing, hands trembling. I'm so excited I almost crap on myself. It's just like taking a hit." Grand Central Winter is the tale of Stringer's twin addictions--writing and crack--and the lengths he went to in order to satisfy each. But Stringer dwells on neither his descent into hell nor the long journey back. Instead, he paints a nuanced portrait of street life itself, its pleasures as well as its terrors. Hustlers, hookers, dealers, and addicts come to life in a series of vignettes that are tough, unsentimental, but compassionate to the core. There's honest rage to be found in Grand Central Winter, but precious little political posturing. "Policy is never the real issue," he writes in "Dear Homey," his advice column for New York's homeless paper, Street News. "The real issue is the hearts of men."
Product Description
In the underground tunnels below Grand Central Terminal, Lee Stringer -- homeless and drug-addicted over the course of eleven years -- found a pencil to run through his crack pipe. One day, he used it to write. Soon, writing became a habit that won out over drugs. And soon, Lee Stringer had created one of the most powerful urban memoirs of our time.With humane wisdom and a biting wit, Lee Stringer chronicles the unraveling of his seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive, and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York City. Whether he is portraying "God's corner," as he calls 42nd Street, or his friend Suzi, a hooker and "past-due tourist" whose infant he sometimes baby-sits; whether he recounts taking shelter underneath Grand Central by night and collecting cans by day, or making a living hawking Street News on the subway, Lee Stringer conveys the vitality and complexity of a down-and-out life. Rich with small acts of kindness, humor, and even heroism amid violence and desperation, Grand Central Winter offers a touching portrait of our shared humanity.
Download Description
In the tunnels below Grand Central Terminal, Lee Stringer -- homeless and drug-addicted over the course of eleven years -- found a pencil to run through his crack pipe. One day, he used it to write.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
It's literary memoir, not social commentary February 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Several reviewers criticize Stringer's Grand Central Winter for what they see as its lack of information about life on the streets as well as an absence of narrative cohesion. While I sympathize with both of these complaints, I also think they're misguided.
In the first place, Stringer doesn't claim to be writing social commentary or advocating social reforms. His book is a memoir, pure and simple. His stories are from the street, as the book's subtitle announces, but not necessarily about the street. Obviously in describing his life on the streets, Stringer necessarily sheds some light on what street life in general is like. Just as obviously, he also has a few things to say in passing about public policy (he's especially bitter about the "antiseptic Good Samaritanism" of large-scale relief agencies). But the focus of his book is sharing his own experiences living on the street.
And this takes us to the second point: Stringer's writes about selected experiences. He's not really trying to tell a neatly packaged story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. (Philosophers might describe his approach as "phenomenological.") I don't know why Stringer chose to write about the episodes in his life he did. Some of them are probably consciously chosen; others may've forced themselves onto the empty page. But the point is that they're vignettes, not sequential episodes that together tell a full-fledged story.
For my money, the vignettes are wonderfully written. Their minimalist style sets an almost photographic tone: to the point, revelatory, unsentimental, sometimes grim. Stringer successfully resists the temptation to demonize or romanticize.
Harsh and Real June 29, 2007
I encountered this book on a sale rack and didn't expect much from it. After all why would be so discounted?
I was wrong. This was a chilling and real depiction of life on the streets as a crack addict. What it may lack in direction, it makes up for with hard-hitting writing.
If you are looking for a nice breezy read, this is not the book for you. If you want some food for thought, then don't miss it.
 A Well Written Moving Account Of Homeles Life On The Streets April 24, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is an autobiographical account of a time in the author's life, Lee Stringer. Mr.Stringer begins the book describing his life as a homeless, crack addict who finds a pencil he intends to use to clean his crack pipe with. Then he realizes that a pen can be a very powerful tool and he starts to write. He writes about the streets where the homeless are seen but so often overlooked and his eventual position as a writer for a newspaper.Stringer has realized in this book that "the pen is indeed mightier than the sword" as he goes about seeking Recovery and Redemption. This book is a very well written account of a man's struggle to free himself from a serious addiction.The reader will cheer for Mr. Stringer as he tries to regain his Life and his Dignity.
 It could have been much more June 20, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I stuck the book out for about 2/3 of it always hoping for some point to be made from the various unconnected stories he tells, but most have no point or real end...such as the story of the blonde hooker who becomes central to his life for many months or the even less understandable the defrocked Greek priest who wants to be in the newspaper.Very little of this book is about how it is to be homeless or to sleep under subway tunnels etc. It's mostly about his hustling newspapers and cans and taking drugs,but even that is surface level & not very detailed.
 Terrible....... July 11, 2002
6 out of 28 found this review helpful
This was the worst book I ever read.I thought the story was going to be about the homeless in Grand Central.Yet all the
main character Lee talks about is his work with a newspaper
written by the homeless.The book drags on and on going nowhere.
The characters Lee mentions in the book are as dull as the book
itself.I was trully disappionted.The only thing this book is good
for is putting you to sleep.
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