"I had time to kill, so instead of taking the subway, I decided to walk." Julius's walks in Open City have a mythical quality to them, the city of New York is laid bare, its complexity and scatter synthesized into simple observation. The thing that moved me the most about this work was its intelligence. Every detail, especially, every act of remembering detail, works. Its ending was unique and surprising. I'm curious as to why more was not made out of his mixed-race heritage, but I'm not mixed, so that curiosity has this sort of squalid staleness to it that makes it virtually useless. At times I felt the author, Teju Cole, was essentially the narrator. I wondered why this book was so clearly labeled as a novel. That is the plight writers like me feel when faced with literary talent. The one thing I could say to denigrate this shit is that at times the style could be easily parodied in many different forms of media. I could imagine a Simpsons episode making fun of it. Obviously, even my only critique transitions into compliment.