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Brooklyn and Literary references

SDC

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I feel challenged to come up with literary references to Brooklyn, a.k.a. Kings County, New York City. It has about 3 mln residents and covers about 70 sq miles. The wife and I lived there for 6 years and our daughter was born there.

I can come up with 3 titles of stories or novels which resonate in, at least, US literature. (I have no idea whether they mean anything outside of the US).

-- Only the Dead Know Brooklyn (short story by Thomas, not Tom, Wolfe).

-- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (novel by Betty Smith).

-- Last Exit to Brooklyn (novel by Hubert Selby).

Those are off the top of my head. Here is my challenge to all: name any other iconic stories/ novels/ dramatic or literary or musical works with Brooklyn in the title... Without looking them up!!

You don't have to have read or understood them.

Thanks. The name, incidentally, is a butchered spelling from Dutch.
 
A tree still grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

The Brooklyn Follies (Paul Auster)
 
"Tree Still Grows..."?? Wait a minute. You are going to have to document that. Just checked WorldCat (biggest datebase of library holdings) and that only refers to an article in NY Times Book Review from 1999.

Remember, I asked for "iconic," not just any usage of the term. Otherwise the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens would be all over the place.
 
Brooklyn.........Steely Dan


"A tower room at Eden Rock
His golf at noon for free
Brooklyn owes the charmer
Under me"

I don't know if this is iconic or not, but it's the first thing I thought of, whereas I've never heard of "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn." But I'm a Steely Dan fan and have been listening to them a good bit lateley.
 
Where are you from, SDC? I'd guess that you're from a European country, possibly a Slavic one?

Sophie's Choice is set in Brooklyn.

So's some of Walt Whitman's poetry.

The Great Gatsby takes place on Long Island...close! :p
 
European country? I was born in Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD. In what was then called the "Women's Wing" of the hospital, I gather. Home language entirely English (since my parents weren't Baltimore natives -- the local dialect is hard to describe as "English"). Though granted, my father's parents had immigrated from near the Dniester river.

I'm just thinking Brooklyn literary thoughts. I know Paul Auster is the hot B'klyn author nowadays but I haven't built up the nerve to try and read him.
 
SDC said:
"Tree Still Grows..."?? Wait a minute. You are going to have to document that. Just checked WorldCat (biggest datebase of library holdings) and that only refers to an article in NY Times Book Review from 1999.

Remember, I asked for "iconic," not just any usage of the term. Otherwise the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens would be all over the place.
Click to expand...

Sorry my bad - I thought that article was a review of a sequel :mad:
 
SDC said:
European country? I was born in Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD. In what was then called the "Women's Wing" of the hospital, I gather. Home language entirely English (since my parents weren't Baltimore natives -- the local dialect is hard to describe as "English"). Though granted, my father's parents had immigrated from near the Dniester river.
Click to expand...

You're an American and you speak Polish?! That's amazing!

If I knew you in real life, I'd invite you to meet my parents. They'd be shocked! :D
 
Not very literary, but there's always No Sleep 'till Brooklyn by The Beastie Boys. :)
 
EeneyMinnieMoe said:
You're an American and you speak Polish?! That's amazing!

If I knew you in real life, I'd invite you to meet my parents. They'd be shocked! :D
Click to expand...

There are some of us, mostly academics. Around here, I bet Nick Terry (not Terowski, I believe) knows Polish. My case started in high school, when I found I could boost my GPA by taking more language classes; I had a talent and interest. My school was unusual in that it offered Russian. I continued with Russian, and in grad school found that adding Polish gave me an edge, a different angle on the general East-Central European field, that most competitors lacked; my adviser was also bilingual Ukrainian-Polish (from the Lublin area originally) and encouraged me.

And since languages have been useful and interesting to me over the years, I have stuck with a few favorites, Polish one of them.

And as I have said before, one of the things which gripes my guts most about Holocaust deniers is their refusal to deal with the evidence in Polish; there is a fabulous wealth of it. They refuse even to acknowledge its existence.

Whoops. OT.
 
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