CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/29/2016

The Floral Ghost by Susan Orlean and Philip Taaffe

"I was new to the city then—another callow girl hoping to make something of myself here—and the place amazed me. Not long after I had moved to town, a friend invited me to visit him in his new loft. He said it was in the middle of the city. “I’m in the Flower District,” he explained, and even as I heard the words I couldn’t imagine what they meant. A district of flowers? It sounded oxymoronic, coupling commerce with frippery. Manhattan didn’t seem to me like a place where flowers arrived and left in bulk; Manhattan flowers seemed like they would appear only in artful arrangements in the lobbies of buildings or at the maître d’s stands in fancy restaurants." —Susan Orlean, who will appear in conversation with Philip Taaffe tonight at Rizzoli.