I had forgotten I had this book. When I found it, I dusted it off and had a hard time putting it down. It is the reminiscence of Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) growing up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in the 1920s and 1930s. Brownsville has always been where poor people live. Brownsville is not my community but I’ve biked or walked on many of the streets.
This book, first published in 1951, is more than just a story of one person’s youth. It is a keen-eyed look at the city and the people who give it life. Before parts of Brooklyn became “cool,” and since, there have been vast stretches of uncool Brooklyn, or never-was-cool Brooklyn, some like Brownsville and some not. Read this book.
Also set in this neighborhood is The Amboy Dukes, Irving Shulman’s story of a Jewish youth gang. With either of these books, think of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, at a larger scale and set not in Montréal but in Brooklyn.
It is my privilege to see the city at a slow speed, not cocooned in an automobile. There is so much to see, in the built environment and in the people.