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February 4, 2008
Last Exit
The NY Times
By Amy Finnerty
The Times reviews "Brooklyn Was Mine:"
Brooklyn isn’t Greenwich Village, but many writers — established and ascendant — are concentrated in a handful of low-rise neighborhoods there. In “Brooklyn Was Mine,” a collection of essays edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker, some of the borough’s writers ruminate on arrival and domestic survival in this emerging haute bohemia. The jealous ownership implied by the word “mine” suggests that (à la Walt Whitman) to live in Brooklyn is both to claim possession of a milieu and to be possessed by it. The contributors make the place more sought after and, by a handy symbiosis, the place makes them cool.
With Manhattan financially out of reach, the literary caste has moved to Brooklyn in search of extra bedrooms, parks and cobblestoned charm. Which may be why, despite its very insistent Brooklyn-centricity, the book ultimately lacks a raison d’être beyond the mingling of writers who happen to live there.
The review does not mention one raison d'être, to help fund the legal fight against Atlantic Yards.
Posted by lumi at February 4, 2008 4:51 AM