Jonathan Lethem's new novel/memoir "Brooklyn Crime Novel" revisits the Brooklyn neighborhood he made famous with novels based on his childhood there.
"Brooklyn Crime Novel" blends fiction, memoir and history to chronicle the 50-year transformation of his native Boreum Hill neighborhood, the setting of his acclaimed novels "Motherless in Brooklyn" and "The Fortress of Solitude."
White urban pioneer writers and artists in the 1960s began moving into the area, triggering years of intensive gentrification.
Lethem, the child of artistic parents, grew up on Dean Street, the shifting neighborhood's main thoroughfare. Attending the local New York public elementary school, he was attacked by young blacks whose lives were disrupted by the arrival of the more affluent newcomers. .
In a recent New Yorker article, Lethem details the transformation of the gritty Brooklyn neighborhood, originally known as North Gowanus, named for the polluted canal that runs through the area. He discusses how an early pioneer renamed the neighborhood Boreum Hill to give it a more appealing image.
Lethem's New Yorker essay looks back at the New Yorker writer Jervis Anderson, who in a 1977 article for the magazine examined the neighborhood's transition.
In the New Yorker piece, Lethem comprehensively chronicles the urban pioneers who led the neighborhood's makeover, undermining the lower-class black, Latino and working class whites who had lived there.
Lethem grew up near noted black playwright Lynn Nottage, with whom he rode the subway each day to the LaGuardia High School for the arts in Manhattan's Lincoln Center.
Nottage in an interview in the Paris Review's fall issue recalls growing up in the neighborhood, and its influence on her plays.
"Brooklyn Crime Novel" is the latest notable book in a bountiful fall season.
As AI encroaches upon human life, extreme weather worsens and political rancor rises, an abundance of new books brings hope.
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