Literary Brooklyn by Evan Hughes

Literary Brooklyn

The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life

Evan Hughes

Henry Holt and Co. · Print & ebook · August 16, 2011

For the first time, here is Brooklyn's story through the eyes of its greatest storytellers.

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Who it’s for
Brooklyn’s literary lives open onto a larger story of American city life.
Genres
American Lit Crit, Middle Atlantic History, Writers' Lives
Published
Henry Holt and Co., August 16, 2011

About this book

For the first time, here is Brooklyn's story through the eyes of its greatest storytellers. Like Paris in the twenties or postwar Greenwich Village, Brooklyn today is experiencing an extraordinary cultural boom. In recent years, writers of all stripes—from Jhumpa Lahiri, Jennifer Egan, and Colson Whitehead to Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer—have flocked to its patchwork of distinctive neighborhoods.

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But as literary critic and journalist Evan Hughes reveals, the rich literary life now flourishing in Brooklyn is part of a larger, fascinating history. With a dynamic mix of literary biography and urban history, Hughes takes us on a tour of Brooklyn past and present and reveals that hiding in Walt Whitman's Fort Greene Park, Hart Crane's Brooklyn Bridge, the raw Williamsburg of Henry Miller's youth, Truman Capote's famed house on Willow Street, and the contested streets of Jonathan Lethem's Boerum Hill is the story of more than a century of life in America's cities. Literary Brooklynis a prismatic investigation into a rich literary inheritance, but most of all it's a deep look into the beloved borough, a place as diverse and captivating as the people who walk its streets and write its stories.

Writers and City

Brooklyn’s literary lives open onto a larger story of American city life.

Come here for

  • Literary biography braided with urban history
  • A borough seen through generations of writers

Expect

  • A layered tour of Brooklyn past and present
  • Connections between literary lives and city life

Where it sits

Middle Atlantic History56%
American Lit Crit29%
Writers' Lives25%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • American Lit Crit
Authors
Evan Hughes
Publisher
Henry Holt and Co.
Published
August 16, 2011
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
American Lit Crit