Feeling totally isolated and dépaysé in his tiny digs on West 96th Street, unable to find work, he roamed the city, taking in the spectacle of its modernity – the dizzying downtown skyscrapers, the aerial vectors of its subway system, the giant billboards, the vaudeville movie theatres, the electrified nights…

– Richard Sieburth describing Blaise Cendrars’ encounters with New York in a review of Cendrars’ Oeuvres Autobiographiques Complètes ‘Blaise Cendrars in the sky’ in Times Literary Supplement , n.d