Blog: Books

Celebrating Philip Roth’s 75th Birthday

April 13, 2008 – 9:13 pm

Philip_Roth_75th
Last Friday the American novelist Philip Roth turned 75. To mark the occasion some of his friends and colleagues paid tribute at Columbia University’s Miller theater. Both the theater and the run off room were filled to capacity. WNYC now offers you the chance to listen to the event online, or download it for your MP3 player.

Panel 1
Judith Thurman, Moderator
Charles D’Ambrosio
Nathan Englander
Jonathan Lethem

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Panel 2
Joel Conarroe, Moderator
Ross Miller
Hermione Lee
Claudia Roth Pierpont
Benjamin Taylor

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Hermione Lee introduces Philip Roth who then delivers his remarks

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Flâneurs

February 6, 2008 – 5:32 pm

Sometime in the 1950s, 20 years before I was even born, my father woke up in Harlem. He and a small group of friends, all new arrivals to this city, decided to walk down to the Battery. It took them the good part of the day – made longer still since they stopped to slake their thirst in a number of bars along the route. As a child the story of this day-long journey took on mythological proportions. It seemed to encapsulate all that once was good and now is gone, back when time moved slowly.

Here in 2008, I walk as often as I can, usually taking two strolls around Brooklyn a day. I am a new mother and walking is well suited to new mothering but I was a walker even before my daughter was born. I even considered walking to the hospital when I went into labor until it became clear that this would not be physically possible. We drove. But I really like to walk. As a New Yorker, this is nothing terribly special—walking is what we do here. There is even a yoga studio in my neighborhood that teaches a course in walking.

In the past I’ve written about famous walkers and have always harbored a fantasy to one day walk from my home in Brooklyn to my mother’s house in Pound Ridge, New York. It would be a journey of only 52-odd miles if I could walk there in the most direct way which, of course, I cannot. This has always been a pesky problem for me–how does a person walk out of New York City? Getting to Manhattan from here– Carroll Gardens — is no problem. They built a beautiful bridge just for that purpose. Then I suppose I could take the Willis Avenue Bridge from Manhattan and just start heading north once I reached the Bronx. But after the Bronx the path gets a bit uncertain.

Today I have to be satisfied with a walk through my own part of town. I am lucky that walking through my neighborhood is a bit like Hericlitius’ River – never the same walk twice. Case in point: Today a woman coming out of the South Brooklyn Casket Company told me I had a cute hat.

Later I spied this secret door.

secret-door.jpg

Old School

February 5, 2008 – 1:22 pm

The man I wanted to blog about today didn’t want anything to do with it.

“No publications!” he said.

“Uh, it’s just for a blog,” I told him.

His look said plenty. Blog. Blob. Slog. Slob. Slug.

His name is Chick and he owns a junk shop around the corner from my house. He is called Chick because he worked in a chicken factory on Columbia Street for years and years. He dropped out of school when he was quite young. I think he told me once that he was one of 16 children. He has ten great grandchildren now. Sometimes my husband and
I buy records from him. He is very much part of the old neighborhood here and so I suppose he looks on us as interlopers. I don’t take sides in the old neighborhood, new neighborhood divide. I like them both.

We live on 4th Place in Carroll Gardens above a family who has been in the neighborhood for a long time. Once I asked my landlady if she’d lived around here her whole life.

“No. I moved away once.”

“Where’d you go?”

“3rd Place.”

It’s against my Taurus nature to embrace change gracefully. But the truth is that –even more than loving old things (which I do) — I love old things that might soon be gone. At the end of last year I started drawing store signs from my neighborhood. Some of the locations are still in business, some are not. The signs have an elegance unmet by
today’s signage. Here are a few of the drawings.

donut1.jpg

laundry.jpg

Gowanus is for Broken Hearts

February 5, 2008 – 1:02 pm

One walk that my daughter and take about twice a week is crossing the Gowanus Canal on Carroll Street and then returning via Union. This walk has the best artwork in New York City. Many creative people live along
the canal and have turned it shores into their own watery gallery.

The Carroll Street Bridge
bridge.jpg

A Wall of Art
12house.jpg

Chandelier
chandelier.jpg

Gowanus is for Broken Hearts
brokenhearted.jpg

The Engine Room

February 4, 2008 – 10:12 am

I am lucky enough to teach writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After the students, my favorite part of campus must be the buildings — an elegant if surly lot. The school opened in 1887 so a walk through campus can feel like a walk through the Gilded Age — gilded once again by young people with pink hair.

Our library is famous for three reasons. First, the floors in the stacks are made of glass blocks designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Second, parts of Debbie Does Dallas were shot inside. Third, in the basement of the library there is an entrance to one of Pratt’s infamous (but way too dark and scary to enter) secret tunnels that link a few of the old buildings together underground.

The jewel of the campus is the Engine Room. A glass and brass centerpiece that’s changed very little since 1887. It feels like walking into one of Joseph Cornell’s boxes. Pratt is home to a population of award-winning cats who often stroll about campus, dart into classrooms and generally act like they own the place. They all live in the Engine Room and one can hardly blame them. Three steam driven generators that were installed in 1900 still provide heat to the system. They are the oldest such machines known to be operating in the northeast. The best time to visit is during the year-end holidays when the people who care for the Engine Room have it shining, all decked out in a colored light fantasy. On New Year’s Eve, at the stroke of midnight, a steam whistle in blown, making an eerie and magnificent sound, surrounding the strangers who stand in the cold to hear its blast.

engine.jpg

Very superstitious

February 4, 2008 – 9:42 am

As I was writing “The Invention of Everything Else” I started to pay very close attention to the pigeons in my neighborhood. At times, they would even influence my editorial decisions. If I’d spent a day revising and then went outside and saw a sick and mangled bird I took that to mean that perhaps I should reconsider the work I’d just done. But if I went outside and saw a bird with bright, healthy pink feet or a gorgeous flock circling overhead then I thought I’d done a good job.

So last week I got into a pickle. I found a pigeon wing on the sidewalk outside my house. With no pigeon attached. Ugh. While some might be able to take that as a good omen, I could not. It seems birds really need their wings in order to be birds. I thought I’d better take care of this lost wing. But what to do? I couldn’t make it fly through the air again. My daughter and I took the wing down to Red Hook with us on a walk. The Queen Mary 2 was in port and the harbor at Valentino Pier was bright white in the sun light. The area by the pier was once known as Fort Defiance and in August 1776, when the British had 400 ships in New York harbor, this fort was crucial in helping Washington and his troops escape to safety. The Staten Island Ferry passed by while my daughter and I stood by the water. Swimming seems almost as good as flying. We set the wing adrift on the sea.

wing.jpg

Christmas everyday

February 1, 2008 – 1:50 pm

People in my neighborhood celebrate Christmas with a whole lot of lights. Our downstairs neighbors always put out a glowing Santa and a creche scene. The black king’s nose has been rubbed white so he makes me think of Rudolph the white-nosed wise man.

Here it is February though a number of folks in my neighborhood still have their X-mas decorations up. Some keep them up year round. Which reminds me of one of the first jobs I had in New York. I worked at an envelope factory and sat beside a young woman from Sheepshead Bay who loved Christmas so much that when it was her turn to choose the music we listened to while we worked, she always chose Christmas carols. Even in the middle of July, we’d listen to Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels, Jingle Bell Hop…

x-mas.jpg

Planes

January 29, 2008 – 5:32 pm

Planes flying into LaGuardia pass right over my house. When I first moved in and saw them approaching at night I thought it was some sort of magical, magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime convergence. Until the planes kept doing it every single night. Still, it’s quite a spectacle when seven or eight planes are lined up from here to Staten Island to New Jersey. Here’s a blurry photo.
planes.jpg

Swoon

January 29, 2008 – 11:48 am

The artist Swoon works somewhere near my house and I am the grateful recipient of her close proximity as she’s primarily a street artist and so my walks have been beautified by her efforts. She is both a printmaker and an extreme paper cutter. Her work is lovely. Often, by the time I find it, it has been trashed somewhat by street life. One of my favorite pieces of hers was tucked into an abandoned doorway that since then has been bricked up. I pass by the hidden doorway all the time and wonder how many people remember the treasure that is buried behind those bricks.

Before
swoondoor3.jpg

After
wall.jpg

I love Swoon too
swoon1.jpg

Pigeons

January 24, 2008 – 11:32 am

PigeonsPeople still keep coops of pigeons on their roofs in my Brooklyn neighborhood. There is one coop very nearby so that when I look out my front window I’m often able to witness a gorgeous, fighting-weight flock, swooping and circling. The birds turn together as if hearing some silent command. It is a fantastic act of choreography and one I never tire of seeing.

Years ago my husband wrote a story about the pigeon keepers of Coney Island. The men all belonged to a pigeon club and while they were bird lovers they also used the birds to gamble, betting which pigeon would make it back to the coop first. The men told my husband about a man from their club who’d been caught cheating at the bird races. My husband asked what happened to the cheater. There was silence. The men said nothing. Next question!

I love the city’s wild birds as well though I don’t regularly feed them except from my back fire escape. I can’t understand City Councilman Simcha Felder plans to ban pigeon feeding and fine those who break the law $1,000. Has he never seen a pigeon? They are beautiful. Their necks are like jewels. They have pink feet! And what would happen to all the lonely souls in NYC’s parks who depend on the birds for companionship? Perhaps they could show up at Councilman Felder’s house for supper.


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