I agree that Back Where I came From is a love letter to New York City. It expressed things that I could relate to being from New York myself, and although some of us don’t always stop and think of how great our City is, we know why it is great if someone asked. Liebling is very comparative in order to emphasize on what he is trying to say. When you compare something to something else it creates a visual on something you can’t see upfront. Also Liebling sometimes uses the comparative to stress something that could not probably compare to New York for example when he says “I always think of back where my friends came from as one place, possessing a homogeneous quality of not being New York.” He is comparing and thinking of where his friends are from and looks at New York to say it does not compare, there is nothing like it. Relating to love with someone else it is like the only thing you see, like New York is to Liebling.