What View Do You Watch When You Write?

A book has been published that reveals the views some famous writers enjoy as the settle down each day in New York. But this is no straight photographic exercise. The views have been sketched by artist Matteo Pericoli in powerful line drawings that do more than report what happens outside the window, they seem ready to pass on a story.

For example one drawing simply shows three flights of a fire escape running down past the window. Looking through the handrails and steps you can see other windows opposite. Although there is nobody in the picture you instantly begin to imagine people on the stairs, do they belong there or are they intruders? The view is completely ordinary, boring even, but the way it is drawn adds the drama, hints at mysterious lives hidden behind the far curtains.

There are 63 views altogether and with each one Pericoli says he is trying to pull out into the open the workings of the city. He feels New Yorkers are not curious enough about their city, as an outsider who trained in Architecture in Milan he can’t get enough of it and would like to draw it all. As he says there are millions of New Yorks. Tom Wolfe says his New York is completely outside his window, he looked at 33 apartments before he settled on one – and it was chosen entirely for the view. To this day, he says, he doesn’t really know his apartment, only what’s outside it. This is the view that gave birth to his smash hit Bonfire of the Vanities. Like the book it’s intense, crowded and powerful.

Film Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron has a view of the Chrysler building which she describes as her favourite building. “The absolute epitome of every glittery dream I have ever had about New York,” which is why when she works she faces the other way. “Or I would never get anything done!”

Is the view outside important to you, or simply distracting? As a writer you have to pour that concentration down onto the page, no matter what’s around you. The visualisation happens in your mind which is why, when you look at this book, you take more out of it than you actually see.  The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York, is published by Simon & Schuster.