Category: NonFiction

Lopate, Phillip, ed. Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. Library of America, 1998.

Reason read: First and foremost, the Portland Public Library has an annual reading challenge and this satisfies the category of anthology. Second reason: the New York Gypsy Festival takes place in October and November.

Literature written for and about New York is organized in chronological order in Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. In the diary of Philip Hone you will read about a child abandoned on his doorstep. Henry David Thoreau goes wandering around Staten Island looking for nature. You will read the day-long observations of Nathaniel Parker Willis. Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener has a place. Fanny Fern, also known as Sara Payson Willis, contributes as the first woman newspaper columnist in the United States. You’ll learn that O. Henry started writing fiction in prison. James Huneker will tell you about the New York public urban parks: Battery, Corlears (which I had never heard of before), Gramercy, Bronx, and Central, to name a few. Charles Reznikoff would walk twenty miles a day and by default find interesting material for his poetry. (All I want to know is what happened to the lost shirt.) E.B. White chimes in. William Carlos Williams was called the “bard of Rutherford, New Jersey”, but he wrote about New York City with such eloquence. You will read a fraction of a biography of LaGuardia by Robert Moses and hear from Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Ralph Ellison, and so many more. The mini biography of Lady Day was my favorite.

As an aside, you know I can’t write a review about a New York book without mentioning Natalie Merchant, right? When Lopate mentioned the contrasts of New York, I instantly thought of “Carnival” when Natalie sings about wealth and poverty. Later on, Walt Whitman has a poem about New York and that instantly reminded me of “Song of Himself” off Natalie’s new Keep Your Courage album.

Favorite lines. From Philip Hone The Diary: “It is too much for the frailty of human nature and I am off to the Springs tomorrow to get out of the way” (p 32). I can only assume he means Saratoga Springs. Here is another from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, “New York City’s the most fatally fascinating thing in America” (p 387). “Thus I take leave of my lost city” from F. Scott Fitzgerald (p 578), and “Laughter is a beautiful obituary” from “Lou Stillman” by Jimmy Cannon (p 933).

Confessional: I skipped Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos because I had already read them. I also skipped the excerpts from Dawn Powell’s diaries because she is on my list for another time.

Editor fact: If you Google Phillip Lopate, you will find a picture of him with a cat.

Book trivia: the copyright page is cool. Words form the shape of the Empire State Building.

Playlist: Beethoven, “Blue Bell”, Bessie Smith, Benny Goodman, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Chick Webb, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, “Charlie’s Elected Now”, Coleman Hawkins, “Danny By My Side”, Duke Ellington, E. Power Biggs, Ethel Waters, Fats Waller, George Gershwin, Gladys Bentley, “Hello, Central, Give Me No Man’s Land”, “He May Be Your Man But He Come to See Me Sometime”, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, “Orange Blossom Waltz”, Paul Robeson, Prologue to Pagliacci, Puccini, Roy Eldridge, Roland Hayes, “St. James Infirmary”, “Swanee River”, “Take Your Time, Miss Lucy”, Trixie Smith, Thelonious Monk, “Under the Bamboo Tree”, and “You Called Me Baby Doll a Year Ago”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Writing New York “a deliriously diverse mix of writers…too bulky to carry around” (Book Lust To Go p 152).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “New York City: a Taste of the Big Apple” (p 151). To be fair, Writing New York is about more than just New York City. It covers people and cultures as well.