New York Literary Lights: William Corbett - Softcover

Corbett, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555972721 ISBN 13: 9781555972721

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 1998

Synopsis

William Corbett takes an expansive look at the ghosts, the landmarks, and the current denizens who make New York City so popular with the literary crowd. Ranging from Paul Auster to Zora Neale Hurston, from the Algonquin Round Table to the Nuyorican Poets Café, from Edgar Allan Poe to the Beat Generation, Corbett takes us on a dizzying ride through the literary highlights of New York.

Illuminating a city rich in famous writers against a combustible mixture of cultures and commerce, Corbett shows us how New York's multifaceted literary present has emerged from its constantly evolving past. New York Literary Lights travels through both time and place to provide an altogether enlightening, entertaining hybrid of history, gossip, and reference book.

About this title

Review:

New York Literary Lights is an encyclopedic collection of New York writers, their works, haunts, glories, and foibles. Meticulously researched and written with a sensitivity for the nuances of character, William Corbett reveals that Edna St. Vincent Millay lived in a house seven feet six inches wide; Russian immigrant Irving Berlin once said, "Everybody ought to have a Lower East Side in their life;" Jack Kerouac entered Columbia University on an athletic scholarship; Carson McCullers's birth name was Lula Carson Smith; and playwright Edward Albee found the name for his famous play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? scrawled on the mirror of a 10th Street bar.

Covering not only writers, but publishers, agents, magazines, bookstores, libraries, neighborhoods, and institutions, Corbett has met his goal of allowing the reader to appreciate, but not get lost in, the past--for New York thrives on the "rhythm of unceasing change." From the Academy of American Poets to Louis Zukofsky, hundreds of entries bring a freshly humble view of some of the biggest names in writing history. Whether you're seeking history, reference, or travel guide, Corbett's collection will satisfy. As Russell Banks says, "Reading it is like taking a leisurely stroll through the history of writing in New York City alongside a brilliant local historian who is as droll and sharp as he is learned." --Kathryn True

From the Back Cover:

New York: Literary Lights

"More than any mere guidebook, New York Literary Lights is an alphabetized collection of thumbnail biographies of writers, bars, buildings, bookstores, and neighborhoods. Reading in it is like taking a leisurely stroll through the history of writing in New York City alongside a brilliant local historian who is as droll and sharp as he is learned."--Russell Banks

William Corbett takes an expansive look at the ghosts, the landmarks, and the current denizens who make New York City so popular with the literary crowd. Ranging from Paul Auster to Zora Neale Hurston, from the Algonquin Round Table to the Nuyorican Poets Café, from Edgar Allan Poe to the Beat Generation, Corbett takes us on a dizzying ride through the literary highlights of New York.

Illuminating a city rich in famous writers against a combustible mixture of cultures and commerce, Corbett shows us how New York's multifaceted literary present has emerged from its constantly evolving past. New York Literary Lights travels through both time and place to provide an altogether enlightening, entertaining hybrid of history, gossip, and reference book.

Poet and memorist William Corbett lives in Boston's South End is Writer in Residence at MIT. He edits poetry for Grand Street. He is the author of Philip Guston's Late Work: A Memoir, New & Selected Poems, Literary New England, and Furthering My Education.

About this edition

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1555972721
• ISBN 13: 9781555972721
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 346