A Thoroughly IncomIncompletepleteplete,, Constantly Evolving, Partially AAANNNNNN OTATED BBBIBLIOGRAPHY for use with the Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl updated November 19, 2007 ... I. Writing By the Writers Broyard, Anatole. Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir. A beautiful and very short book about living in the Village after World War II by Anatole Broyard, who became a legendary critic for the New York Times. Features a great story about Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin and how not to get punched by either of them. Crane, Hart. Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters . Langdon Hammer, Ed. New York: Literary Classics of the U.S. / Library of America, 2006. Crane is a difficult poet; although many scholars consider him one of the most important of the 20th century, he can be hard to read. Try “Chaplinesque.” It’s short, and it’s kind of about a kitten. Crane, Stephen. Stephen Crane: Prose and Poetry . New York: Literary Classics of the U.S. / Library of America, 1984. Includes Maggie: A Girl of the Streets , The Red Badge of Courage , stories, sketches, journalism and poetry. Maggie takes barely an afternoon to read, but the images will stick around. Crane took a big risk by writing about the parts of New York thought unfit for literature. Dylan, Bob. Chronicles Volume I . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. It turns out that Dylan is not only a good writer, but also funny as hell. He describes his mentors, his idols, and his friends in curt, unexpected sentences that are more often than not good enough to inscribe on someone’s gravestone. Hellman, Lillian. Scoundrel Time . Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1976. Hellman's memoir of her experiences in the 1950s, including her summons from the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Some call it partially fiction, but Hellman's feisty tone and quick wit are enduring and endearing. Henry, O. "The Last Leaf." The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories of the Four Million . Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1920. You can find "The Last Leaf" (and many other wonderful New York stories) in several anthologies of O Henry's work, but it was originally published as part of The Trimmed Lamp circa 1907. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road . New York: Penguin Books, 1957. Few books have made more of an impact on our culture, and rarely does prose have energy like this. You’re likely to find yourself thinking seriously about making dramatic, irresponsible life changes long before you hear Kerouac saying wistfully, “nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.” Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Collected Poems . Norma Millay, Ed. New York: Harper, 1956. Especially good are “Renascence” (the poem that made her famous), “First Fig” (the poem you already know by heart), “Thursday,” and “To The Not Impossible Him.” Thomas, Dylan. Collected Poems . New York: New Directions Books, 1953 This has all the poems Thomas wanted preserved. Particularly beautiful are “Fern Hill,” “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” and of course “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Van Ronk, Dave, and Elijah Wald. The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir . Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005. Dave Van Ronk, the greatest of all the Greenwich Village folksingers, remembers the “Great Folk Scare” and the men, women, and in one case a monkey, who he knew and lived with. You will almost certainly drop the book from laughing at least once. Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence . In case you thought that that writers in New York City were only concerned with decadence, sexual liberation and the pursuit of one’s deepest and weirdest dreams, this devastating novel about the wealthy residents of Lower Fifth Avenue in 1870s will amaze you with its detailed observations of aristocratic manners. And its detailed observations of flower arrangements. Like a merciless and somewhat pithier Jane Austen. 2 II. Writing About the Writers Deirdre Bair. Anais Nin: A Biography. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995. This book compassionately describes a fascinating and difficult life: Nin’s many lovers and two husbands, the complicated network of lies she built to maintain it all, her sometimes- desperate narcissism, and, in the end, the powerful effect she must have had, to draw so many people so close for so long. Collins, Paul. The Trouble with Tom: the strange afterlife and times of Thomas Paine. New York: Bloomsbury, 2005. Here's what the book jacket says: "A typical book about an American founding father doesn't start at a gay piano bar and almost end in a sewage ditch. But then, Thomas Paine wasn't your typical founding father." Which is why we on the pub crawl like him so much. Ferris, Paul. Dylan Thomas: The Biography. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2000. The author grew up near Thomas’s hometown, and his insights and general good writing make this the most readable Thomas biography. Without shying from the dirty bits of Thomas’s life, Ferris shows that the legend of Thomas – which we on the pub crawl have been shamelessly perpetuating for years – is more than a little overblown, but the truth is no less interesting. Be sure you’re getting the New Edition, because the author held back some important details in the 1977 version so that he wouldn’t lose his access to Caitlin Thomas, Dylan’s widow, and so that he wouldn’t get sued. Lee, Hermione. Edith Wharton . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. A brand new biography! Getting good press … but we haven’t read it yet. Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay . New York: Random House, 2001. This fabulous biography reads like a novel. You'll fall in love with Vincent, just like everybody who met her evidently did. Mitchell, Joseph. Joe Gould’s Secret . New York: Viking, 1965. Includes the author's "Professor Sea Gull" and "Joe Gould's secret" which were published as Proflies in the New Yorker, Dec. 12, 1942, and Sept. 19 and 26, 1964, respectively. III. Writing About The Places Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 . This is a very, very long book. But if you need to know anything about what happened in New York City before 1898, it’ll probably tell you. 3 Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons, and Impact . Lawlor, William T., ED. Santa Barbara, CA: ACB-CLIO, Inc., 2005. A clear, concise, and highly informative resource on the Beat Generation. Churchill, Allen. The Improper Bohemians; a re-creation of Greenwich Village in its hey- day. New York, NY: E. P. Dutton & Company, INC, 1959 ** Out of print, but an excellent read, probably one of the best books I’ve found about the scene and the artists and writers leading up to but not including the beats. You’ll wish you lived here then. ** Corbett, William. New York Literary Lights . Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1998. The encyclopedia style entries in this work are brief, and the book itself is small and easy to carry, making it the rare reference source that feels like a book for pleasure reading. The Encyclopedia of New York City . Jackson, Kenneth T., Ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. This is a fabulous desk reference for anyone who lives in, works in, or is at all curious about New York City. Crammed into this large (1,350 page) volume are facts, stories and legends about nearly every conceivable aspect of New York’s history and contemporary life (save, of course, anything specific to this last decade, but I believe an updated edition is in the works), and literature is given no short shrift. Greenwich Village: Culter and Counterculture. Beard, Rick and Berlowitz, Leslie Cohen., ED. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993 A wonderful collection of essays about Greenwich village, ranging from architecture to art. Hamill, Pete. A Drinking Life. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1976 A reflection of a life of drinking from a post drinker, bouncing around in the bars, pubs and clubs of Manhattan, much of it spent in the Lion’s Head. Folpe, Emily Kies. It Happened on Washington Square . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. A detailed history of Washington Square Park complete with photographs, drawings and maps. Johnston, Johanna. The Heart That Would Not Hold: A Biography of Washington Irving. New York, NY: M. Evans and Company, INC., 1971 Not specifically focused on Greenwich Village, it does give you a taste of life in a very young New York City in a very young nation, and also the fascinating life of one of the United States’ first writers. 4 Morgan, Bill. The Beat Generation in New York: a walking tour of Jack Kerouac's city . San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997. Things have changed in the neighborhood since Morgan published this book in 1997 (like the location of Kettle of Fish for example), but still worth checking out if you want to learn more about the beats all over NYC. Wetzsteon, Ross. Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: the American Bohemia, 1910-1960. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, INC. 2002 Very thorough read, each chapter covering different people, places and circumstances that gave Greenwich Village it’s fascinating reputation. Each chapter is it’s own essay, so you can easily skip around in any order you like. Warning: his chapter on Edna St. Vincent Millay will have you in love with her- just like everyone else.