Up close and personal

My apologies to the young, attractive couple in Perry Street in Greenwich Village, whose love-making I’ve been keeping a close eye on over the last year and a half. I can’t really help it. My eighth-floor flat is on exactly the same level as theirs, and their window is only 20 yards from mine across a tiny strip of garden. If it’s any consolation to the young couple, I haven’t seen much — they always drop down on the sofa out of my line of sight before the good bits. That’s the thing about New York — it’s a cheek-by-jowl place, and you can’t help getting a close-up on a lot of jowls and cheeks, upper and lower.

This is the New York Alfred Hitchcock caught in Rear Window, filmed only a few streets from my flat. And it’s the seedy sardine tin of a city caught by the veteran cartoonist, Will Eisner, who died two years ago, aged 87.