"A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life, including sexual life, could be carried on, on many levels"
About this Quote
New York gets cast here as less a place than a permission slip. Kosinski’s line isn’t praising better nightlife in some touristy way; it’s diagnosing a civic atmosphere where behavior can be improvised and identities can be tried on without immediate social prosecution. The key phrase is “on many levels” - a deliberately elastic clause that suggests stratification (class, subculture, neighborhood, private/public) while also implying a spectrum of desire. He’s not only talking about sex; he’s talking about the infrastructure that makes reinvention plausible: anonymity, density, and a weak grip of inherited etiquette.
As a novelist, Kosinski knows the power of comparative framing. “European cities” stands in for tradition, surveillance-by-familiarity, and the old-world bargain where belonging is bought with conformity. New York, by contrast, reads like a marketplace of selves. “Freedom and ease” is doing double duty: freedom as ideology, ease as logistics. The subtext is that liberation isn’t just moral courage; it’s practical. You can find your people. You can disappear into the crowd. You can conduct a private life in public space without it becoming everybody’s business.
The historical context matters, too. For an immigrant writer working in postwar America, the city’s sexual openness signals modernity and power, but also risk: the same loosened rules that enable experimentation can enable exploitation, performance, and loneliness. Kosinski’s admiration carries a thin undertow of appraisal: New York’s permissiveness is exhilarating precisely because it’s not innocent. It’s negotiated, transactional, and, to him, distinctly American.
As a novelist, Kosinski knows the power of comparative framing. “European cities” stands in for tradition, surveillance-by-familiarity, and the old-world bargain where belonging is bought with conformity. New York, by contrast, reads like a marketplace of selves. “Freedom and ease” is doing double duty: freedom as ideology, ease as logistics. The subtext is that liberation isn’t just moral courage; it’s practical. You can find your people. You can disappear into the crowd. You can conduct a private life in public space without it becoming everybody’s business.
The historical context matters, too. For an immigrant writer working in postwar America, the city’s sexual openness signals modernity and power, but also risk: the same loosened rules that enable experimentation can enable exploitation, performance, and loneliness. Kosinski’s admiration carries a thin undertow of appraisal: New York’s permissiveness is exhilarating precisely because it’s not innocent. It’s negotiated, transactional, and, to him, distinctly American.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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