In Eyes on the Street, Robert Kanigel has written the definitive Jacobs biography, illuminating how her ideas rankled, spread and then garnered her such devotion ... Kanigel appraises the work and life of Jacobs in prose that is as lively as her own ... Kanigel’s story of how her ideas took hold is more interesting than her life itself.
...a nuanced, intimate portrait of this influential if arrogant figure whose theories transformed the ways we view our cities ... Kanigel is superb at fleshing out Jacobs the woman; he’s less adept at showing how her ideas evolved and were embraced across the world. Eyes on the Street is a personal story, not an intellectual history. The last third of the book is the weakest ... But these are minor quibbles when compared with the dazzling merits of Eyes on the Street. It’s an exhaustively researched, beautifully rendered tale, revealing the human contours of a vigorous, original mind.
Alas, the book is a word-heap. Eyes on the Street is graceless, infantilizing of its subject and strangely unbuttoned in tone. It often seems to be muttered as much as written, like one of those garbled subway announcements you cannot understand but suspect might matter ... Mr. Kanigel quotes his interview subjects haplessly. His analogies are inane ... His book somewhat finds its feet in its second half, as Mr. Kanigel increasingly gets out of the way and lets Jacobs’s story tell itself. Many readers will have already returned to their apartments, run their fingers through some gin and ice, and slammed the door.
In Eyes on the Street, a comprehensive biography by former MIT professor Robert Kanigel, a portrait emerges of an independent thinker and a caring mother, wife, and friend as well as a courageous if reluctant heroine who stepped into an arena dominated by men ... Being a protester at the barricades is also where a lot of the colorful action is; it’s a tougher challenge to write about a writer, much less a writer with occasional writer’s block. The stretch is sometimes evident in Kanigel’s abundant deployment of italics to make a point ... All that drove this change-maker may yet be more fully understood, but Eyes on the Street is a welcome addition to the literature.
Mr. Kanigel tells this story well. Yet at precisely the point when the tale should deepen and gather force, he makes a curious narrative decision. He skips over Jacobs’s emergence as an activist and public figure in the late 1950s, focusing almost exclusively on her writing...after getting comfortable in 1961, the reader may find it disconcerting to return to 1958 and only then discuss the activism that had helped shape Jacobs’s persona and ideas ... Mr. Kanigel’s description of the Jacobs family’s first week in Toronto illustrates his strengths as a writer...But Jacobs’s life in Toronto becomes very dull indeed.
Kanigel, who has written several books, here favors recitation over response, unfurling the details of a life rather than grappling too aggressively with the ideas to which it gave birth ... Kanigel rightly tries to counter some of the deification around Jacobs’s cultural standing, leaving us with a work of wary appreciation that perhaps isn’t quite wary enough ... Kanigel’s book invites the rest of us to keep debating.
The author is explicit in his desire to convey the hurdles Jacobs faced as a woman and a mother, so one wishes he’d focused less on her appearance or at least consulted a thesaurus before describing her as 'fat and dumpy' ... Kanigel’s account of how Jacobs came to write Death and Life is so compelling that the biography suffers a loss of momentum afterward ... Eyes on the Street works because as cities evolve and face fresh crises – gentrification, soaring rents, and renewed segregation — those ideas continue to challenge as much as they fascinate.
...where Jacobs’ writings tore down and reconstructed the way we understand cities, Kanigel never quite succeeds in digging down to his subject’s foundation ... Eyes on the Street is haunted by the impression that Jacobs has gotten the better of her biographer...Despite the ostentatious familiarity of the book’s tone, his subject remains always at arm’s length.
...a birth-to-death account that’s ambitious and cloying by turns ... It’s an atmospheric tale, and Kanigel does it justice...But the author strikes a conversational tone throughout that tries too hard to be engaging.
