The Books of the States: New York (31 Electoral Votes)

As the resident former New Yorker on the Books Editorial team (I was born and raised in Madison County--the geographical center of New York State, attended a SUNY school on the shores of Lake Ontario, and spent my graduate school years in Manhattan's Morningside Heights) I was enlisted with today's impossible assignment: assembling the 31 Books of New York for our State by State Project. Based on the state's electoral votes 31 titles seems generous, but I've signed up for a Sisyphean task (swapping in a giant apple for a boulder) trying to winnow a list of even 31 for a state that hundreds upon hundreds of writers call home.

I tried to take a cue from New York magazine's 40th anniversary canon: the book had to be "unmistakably New Yorky." They had the benefit of limiting their picks to the past 40 years, though, while we're looking at everything from Washington Square to Lush Life (both among my honorable mentions). Certain books immediately sprang to mind--Bright Lights, Big City, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Catcher in the Rye (that's the camera shy Salinger's Catcher in the Rye author photo, later removed from future printings, gracing our authorial state quarter today--what I wouldn't give for a Jerome David Salinger coin to carry around in my pocket!)--and within 10 minutes I had a longlist of over 100 books. And as for "unmistakably New Yorky," it was painful for me to leave Don DeLillo's panoramic Underworld, with its "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" prologue (and it's iconic cover, which took on new meaning after 9/11), on the bench (let alone Great Jones Street). I'll admit it's a pretty NYC-centric lineup, but I tried to represent upstate and beyond the boroughs as best I could. Here it is... one man's books of New York.

• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney ("You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning." With that killer opening sentence, Jay McInerney kicked off a 200-page second-person-plural tour through a young Manhattanite's dark, downward spiral, and joined the bold-faced names among the Page Six crowd as part of the Literary Brat Pack. Over lunch in Seattle Jay offered that Brightness Falls is his favorite among his own books, but his debut remains my personal pick. Part of the of-the-'80s Vintage Contemporaries Original lineup, the book, features iconic New York cover art, where, like in DeLillo's Underworld, the World Trade Center towers stand forever in memory.)
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (One wrong turn in the South Bronx sends WASPy Master of the Universe Sherman McCoy on a dizzying journey through the landscape of New York. Wolfe spared no one in first novel, turning his satirical eye on tabolid reporters, DAs, Wall Street bankers, clergy, politicians, and an entire city. While the film adaptation tanked, Julie Salamon's  The Devil's Candy offers a thoroughly entertaining behind-the-scenes chronicle of a its colossal failure.)
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (Stewart O'Nan claimed Catcher for his Pennsylvania list, but you can't have the Books of New York without J.D. Salinger. Beyond Holden wandering through Central Park and wondering where the ducks go in the winter, Salinger's eccentric Glass family, as seen in Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction, were also New Yorkers, raised on the Upper East Side.)
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (In Ellison's classic--his debut, and his only novel published while he was alive--a young, nameless black man struggles with his identity in the streets of New York. In 2003, an Invisible Man sculpture was unveiled as part of the Ralph Ellison Memorial in Harlem.)
• Time and Again by Jack Finney (Gramercy Park and the gothic Dakota building play central roles in this time-travel mystery that shifts 90 years between two eras of life of New York.)
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (An American tragedy played out over a New York summer. "I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it--overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.")
• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever ("The Chekhov of the Suburbs" turned Westchester County into Cheever Country.)
• The Fortress of Solitude by Johnathan Letham (The Bard of Boerum Hill's Motherless Brooklyn could also be here, but the City is a character itself in this time-capsule tour of Brooklyn from the '70s through the '90s.)
• The Alienist by Caleb Carr (A well-researched historical thriller about a serial killer loose in 1896 New York, with Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt part of the team on the case.)
• Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (Harry Houdini, J.P. Morgan, Stanford White, and Sigmund Freud are just a few of the historical figures woven into the historical tapestry of Doctorow's New York story.)
• Ironweed by William Kennedy (This Great Depression-set story is part of lifelong Albany resident William Kennedy's "Albany Cycle.")
• Side Effects by Woody Allen
• The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
• Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante (Full disclosure: though he probably couldn't pick me out of a lineup, Sante was my thesis adviser at grad school, but connections aside, his debut about New York's "bad old days" (1840-1920), remains one of my favorite New York books.)
• Here Is New York by E.B. White
• Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley (The city lost a great writer last year with the passing of the author and activist, who was made New York's first State Writer in 1989.)
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
• Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
• The Andy Warhol Diaries by Andy Warhol
• Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler (A kaleidoscopic account of a historic summer in the city: Reggie Jackson, mayoral politics, blackouts, punk rock, the Son of Sam, Studio 54.)
• The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
• Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems by Frank O'Hara
• The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scences at The New York Times by Gay Talese
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
• The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead (Whitehead offers a multi-layered, metaphysical tour of the city. "No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge... when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.")
• Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.
• The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud (A tale of the "the smart, sophisticated, anxious young people who think of themselves as the cultural elite.")
• Whitman: Poetry and Prose by Walt Whitman
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
• The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker edited by Robert Mankoff

And here's who I left on the bench:

• Underworld by Don DeLillo
• Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
• A Drinking Life by Pete Hammill
• The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
• Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
• Washington Irving: History, Tales, and Sketches by Washington Irving
• Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell
• New York: The Big City by Will Eisner
• JR by William Gaddis
• The Leatherstocking Tales (Vol. 1) by James Fenimore Cooper
• Washington Square by Henry James
• Lush Life by Richard Price
• Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation by Peter L. Bernstein
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
• Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer by Ben Katchor
• Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz

As former Mayor Ed Koch might say, "How am I doing?" Did I represent the Empire State well or do I deserve a big Bronx cheer for any glaring misses? --BTP

• See all of our state posts
• Read our introduction to The Books of the States: 50 States, 538 Books
• Read our interview with State by State editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey

Comments

[on September 30, 2008 at 02:27 PM]

Jerome Charyn! Don't forget Jerome Charyn!

[Lauren on September 30, 2008 at 03:41 PM]

Delightful and heroic, Brad Parsons. May I add the Jane Austen of the island to your list: late, great Laurie Colwin.

[Aging Lit Major on October 01, 2008 at 10:44 AM]

Other honorable mentionables:
Minor Characters, Joyce Johnson
Downtown: My Manhattan, Pete Hamill
Walker in the City, Alfred Kazin
The Waterworks, EL Doctorow
My Sister Eileen, Ruth McKenney
'Tis and Teacher Man, Frank McCourt
Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman
It Was Gonna Be Like Paris, Emily Listfield
Duplicate Keys, Jane Smiley
Manhattan Memoir, a trilogy by Mary Cantwell
The Eloise books by Kay Thompson
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg

[Nora on October 01, 2008 at 01:15 PM]

Very NYC-centric, but "Who Sleeps with Katz" by Todd McEwen is a beautiful portrait of the city and those who love it. He's a Scotsman, but that ought to make the accuracy of his observations even more impressive.

[Ed Caley on October 19, 2008 at 05:53 PM]

No mention of Arthur Nersessian. He is the quintessential new york writer. if you have not read any of his work you need to go and get a book by him now. My suggestion is either, "Chinese Takeout" or "The F**k Up" or "Dog Run".

[Sara on April 03, 2009 at 07:36 AM]

Although they are short stories, I would like to add Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both taking place in the Catskills. Just trying to add some more upstate lit to the mix. :)

[Sara on April 03, 2009 at 07:41 AM]

Oh never mind, I see you've added Washington Irving to your "bench" list. Although he shouldn't have been benched! :)