SSoP Podcast Episode 58 — New York City: NO! SLEEP! TILL BROOKLYN!

This is a transcription of New York City: NO! SLEEP! TILL BROOKLYN!

David: Hello. Welcome to Strong Sense of Place.

Melissa: In each episode, we focus on one destination and discuss what makes it different than any other place on Earth.

David: Then we recommend five books we love that took us there on the page.

Melissa: I’m Melissa Joulwan.

David: I’m David Humphreys.

David: We’re going around the world one great read at a time. Thanks for joining us.

[cheerful music]

David: Welcome to Strong Sense of Place. Today we get curious about New York City. In Two Truths and a Lie, I’m going to tell you about a store in Brooklyn where you can buy a can of chutzpah.

Melissa: I have been a little low on chutzpah lately.

David: Then we’ll talk about five books we love.

Melissa: I’m recommending a mid-life coming-of-age story that will make you laugh then turn around and kick you in the teeth. In a good way.

David: I’ve got a book that led me to another book that I wish I’d read first. But they’re both great. But first, Mel’s going to bring us up to speed with the New York City 101.

Melissa: I don’t want to be too US-centric, but I wonder where you’d have to go to find someone in the world who hasn’t heard of New York City. Here are a few facts about the city known as The Big Apple, Gotham, and The City That Never Sleeps.

Melissa: It’s the most populous city in the US - about 8 million people, give or take. The city was formed in 1898 by consolidating the five boroughs. Those are Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan.

Melissa: The city has one of the world’s largest natural harbors, and Manhattan is surrounded by three rivers — the Hudson, the East River, and the Harlem. Which means bridges. Iconic bridges! The Gothic Brooklyn Bridge, the double-decker Manhattan Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge — which you might know from the 1970s movie classic Saturday Night Fever, where it was a very literal symbol of the path to a better, more exciting life.

Melissa: New York City is the financial capital of the world. The stock exchange was founded under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street in 1792. That got a little out of control! If New York City were its own country, it would be the 10th largest economy.

Melissa: I present the following factoid without comment: New York is home to the highest number of billionaires and millionaires of any city in the world.

Melissa: To me, what makes New York such a special place is the melting pot of cultures. Ellis Island was the primary immigration entry point in the US from 1892 until 1954. There are currently about 3.1 million expats in NYC — that’s the largest foreign-born population in any world city. And about 800 different languages are spoken there. So it’s one of the most linguistically diverse cities, probably in the history of the world.

Melissa: Music, food, art, fashion, storytelling, theater — they’ve all benefited from stirring together cultures from around the globe. We’ve already talked about NYC culture a bit in previous episodes. I’ll put links in the show notes to our episodes about theater, museum, and library episodes because there are lots of good stories in there.

Melissa: And now, I will attempt to romp through New York City history in three minutes. Here we go!

Melissa: The first inhabitants were the Lenape Native Americans, then Dutch explorers showed up. They established the settlement of New Amsterdam in 1624, and two years later, it was captured by the British who renamed it New York after the Duke of York. If you’ve seen the musical Hamilton, you know New York was the US capital in the late 1700s and home to the ten-dollar founding father.

David: Got a lot farther by working a lot harder - By being a lot smarter - By being a self-starter —

Melissa: By fourteen, they placed him in charge of a trading charter.

Melissa: Big jump now to the 19th century. New York was defined by the opposing forces of waves of immigration from Europe and the richie-rich dudes of the Gilded Age. Gentleman like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan. To their credit, some of them built stuff that made the U.S. better — landmarks like the art deco Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the New York Public Library. Shout out to JP Morgan for hiring Belle da Costa Greene — a Black Woman — to be the director of his library on Madison Avenue in 1905.

Melissa: Next stop: the Harlem Renaissance. The 1920s kicked of with an explosion of the arts that started in Harlem. There were new styles of painting and photography. Writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. Du Bois (boyce) explored the African-American experience. Musicians like Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong got everyone jumpin’ to jazz. 100% would like to time travel back to the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s.

Melissa: In lieu of time travel: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an exhibit about the Harlem Renaissance running now through July 28 with two excellent things you can enjoy online. There’s a 30-minute video tour of the exhibit with a museum curator and a podcast called Harlem is Everywhere.

Melissa: The snazzy jazz era came to an abrupt end with The Great Depression in 1929 and Prohibition — then WWII — which I’ll be talking about when we get to books. But then things turned around with a post-war boom. Disco in the ’70s, greed-is-good in the ’80s, grungy ’90s, and now slick Times Square.

David: Let’s not forget 9/11 and how it changed the city — and the world.

Melissa: There are far too many ways to slice and dice a visit to New York. You could focus on street food or immerse yourself in theater. Go all-in on legendary department stores or visit the most beautiful art deco buildings.

Melissa: Today, I thought I’d share some ideas about how to spend a fun bookish day in the City. With two disclaimers: This is purely subjective. Join us on Substack and we can talk about other bookshops and restaurants that would be awesome for a bookish day in New york. And second, this is a little bit fantasy because I haven’t included annoying things like the realities of time and space and traffic.

Melissa: The day must start with a bagel and cream cheese. I chose Ess-a-Bagel. It was founded in 1976 by an Austrian family. The name means ‘eat a bagel’ in Yiddish, and I can confirm that their everything bagels with scallion cream cheese are dreamy. Good news! They have free shipping in the US so you can get delivery if you can’t get to New York right now.

Melissa: Then we’re off to the Morgan Library and Museum. The library is two stories and is the quintessential fancy library, infused with golden light, frescoed ceilings, Persian rugs, and floor to ceiling bookshelves. The permanent collection is yummy and includes three Gutenberg Bibles and first editions by Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. They also have the largest collection of manuscripts by Anne Brontë. You might want to plan a visit to the Morgan next fall. There will be a special exhibit about Belle da Costa Greene to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Library.

Melissa: Our next stop is the New York Public Library for a free 1-hour tour that highlights the history, architecture, and collections, including the historic Rose Main Reading Room. Which is amazing. Had that surreal feeling of being in a movie.

Melissa: Before we head to Brooklyn for lunch, we’re making a quick stop at the indie bookshop P&T Knitwear. The store’s founder Bradley Tusk named the bookshop to honor his grandfather. In the 1950s, his grandad emigrated to New York after surviving the Holocaust. He started a sweater store called P&T Knitwear with a friend he met in a refugee camp in Germany. That name now belongs to an indie bookshop with a community podcast studio, event space, and cafe. They also award the annual Gotham Book Prize to a work set in New York City.

Melissa: And now to Brooklyn! We’re grabbing a slice of pepperoni pizza with hot honey at Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop. Then going next door to Word bookstore. We were visiting New York and were on our way to the airport to fly home when we stopped in for pizza and books at Word. I saw a book I wanted and thought, I’ll remember it — but I didn’t I didn’t remember it.

Melissa: So a few weeks later, I emailed Word:

‘I was visiting Brooklyn about three weeks ago and stopped in your lovely shop. I wanted to buy ALL THE BOOKS but my suitcase was already full. I keep thinking about a novel I *almost* bought anyway, but I can’t remember the title :-( I’m wondering if you can help me? It was on the front table with all the pretty paperbacks, and it’s a first-person novel about a waiter (maître d’?!) in a posh restaurant… a beautiful woman shows up and kind of upsets everyone’s routine…‘

Melissa: I got a return email almost immediately.

‘It sounds like you’re thinking of THE WAITER by Matias Faldbakken. Hope this helps and we look forward to seeing you soon!’

Melissa: And that’s when I decided that Word is my bookshop in New York.

Melissa: With books in hand, we’re going back to Manhattan for a very dry martini at Bemelmans Bar in The Carlyle Hotel. The bar opened in the 1940s, and its walls are decorated with murals painted by Ludwig Bemelman — he’s the author and illustrator of the Madeline books about a little girl at a boarding school in Paris. The murals show Madeline and her friends, along with elephants, rabbits, and other animals, frolicking around Central Park.

Melissa: Finally, we’re off to bed at The Library Hotel. The hotel has 10 floors and each is dedicated to a category of the Dewey Decimal System. So you can get a room on the history floor or the math & science floor. If you choose the 8th floor, that’s literature, so you can opt to sleep in the fairy tale room or classic fiction or… erotic literature. The hotel’s 6000 books are shelved in the rooms according to their Dewey number. Also worth noting: The do-not-disturb sign says, ‘Shhh… please let me read.’ The hotel’s restaurant-bar also has cozy reading nooks, literary cocktails, and truffle popcorn.

Melissa: The next morning, we’ll get up early stroll along the Literary Walk in Central Park. There are a bunch of literary statues.I have two favorites. First, Hans Christian Anderson. He’s reading his book The Ugly Duckling to a cute duck and a sculpture of characters. And second, a monument to characters from Alice in Wonderland with giant mushrooms that you can climb on. There’s also a Shakespeare garden planted with trees and flowers mentioned in his works. Get a cup of coffee in one of those ‘We’re Happy to Serve You’ cups, park it on a bench with a book, and enjoy a little al fresco reading.

Melissa: The end! That’s our literary day in New York City. Join us on Substack to talk about more bookish fun in NYC.

David: Are you ready for Two Truths and Lie?

Melissa: I will do my best!

David: I’m about to say three statements. Two of them are true. Mel doesn’t know which is the lie. Here is the first statement: There’s a superhero supply store in Brooklyn.

Melissa: That’s fun!

David: This next one requires a little setup. The musical Phantom of the Opera opened on Broadway in January 1988 and closed just last year—in April 2023. That’s 35 years or more than 13,000 performances. Here’s the statement. At least one musician played in ‘Phantom’ for the entire 35-year run.

David: Statement three: There’s a burlesque dancer in Brooklyn. She has an entire act centered around books and literature. Her stage name is Page Turner.

Melissa: Oh, I hope that’s true!

David: Let’s take them one at a time. There’s a superhero supply store in Brooklyn.

Melissa: True!

David: It is! There’s a storefront in Park Slope with a very handsome sign out front. You can go there and buy a cape and a mask, a utility belt, and gloves. X-Ray glasses are available. They also cater to villains. You can buy a catapult, or a chemistry set for your nefarious deeds. They will also sell you a can of superpowers. You can buy omnipotence, muscle, or chutzpah – or gratitude. I’ve also heard that there’s an invisibility testing center there, but I have yet to be able to confirm that.

David: This all started in San Francisco. Author Dave Eggers — you might know him from the book, ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’ — and a teacher friend of his, Nínive Clements Calegari, wanted to open a writing program for young people there. The building that they liked was zoned for retail, though. So they opened up The Pirate Supply Store. That store, of course, stocks compasses, telescopes, skeleton keys, and so on. They have pirate supplies in the front, and a writing program in the back.

David: The writing program. It’s called 826 Valencia after the address of the Pirate Supply—did well enough that it expanded. When it got to Brooklyn, it became a Superhero Supply Store. When it got to London, it became a Monster Supply Store. The supply stores engage the community and inspire young writers, and the sales keep the programs free for students and their families. 826 Valencia has since become the largest youth writing network in the United States and has spread globally. If you’d like to know more, we’ll point to it in our show notes.

David: At least one musician played in ‘Phantom’ for the entire 35-year run.

Melissa: True!

David: Okay, let me paint you a picture here. Way back in 1987, 27 musicians were hired to be the orchestra for “Phantom of the Opera.” The contract those people signed had a ‘run of show’ agreement, which said, in effect: as long as the show is going, you have a job here. Which is, of course, fantastic. Reliable employment can take a lot of work to come by for musicians — and frequently, for people. One of the horn players says he remembers hearing that, and thinking that maybe the show would run for five years, and that would be great.

David: The experience of doing that show is intense. The orchestra pit only barely fits 27 musicians. They are elbow to elbow down there. A string player said, ‘you can barely turn around without knocking something over.’ And they’re there for the 2-and-a-half-hour run time of that show, eight shows a week.

David: One of the musicians described it as being very Groundhog Day. It’s the same show, of course. Every minute of the 2 and a half hours is the exact minute it was the night before. But also, people associated with the show — the cast and crew — tend to do the same things. They set up for the evening. They go to the bathroom at the same time. They eat at the same time, frequently with the same people. They say the same things. ‘You were great last night. Good show, everyone.’ There’s a bit during Phantom where an actor comes into the orchestra pit, and fires a gun. And the smell was the same, lasted the same amount of time. Every performance. 8 shows a week. Week after week after week.

David: And every little thing that everybody does can make somebody else crazy. Someone might smell funny or eat something weird or say something over and over and over. After a while, one of the musicians started using blinders to block out the rest of the orchestra.

David: After a while, there’s a bit of a dissociation. Musicians described having moments where they weren’t sure what was happening, or what day it was. Did I just play the right thing? One of the string players described himself as, quote ‘a violin operator.’ He had no emotional connection to his work. Some of the musicians got a little resentful of Phantom. One of them said about doing another performance, quote ‘there’s almost a feeling of nausea, a physical sensation that I’m literally jumping out of my skin.’ There was a substitute musician – a substitute – who called it a ‘horror show.’

David: The years come and go. During the run, there were Phantom babies who grew into adults. Something I read said that there were three deaths in the string section alone. One of the musicians used his time in the show to teach himself three languages.

David: Ultimately, of the 27 musicians who started in 1987, 11 of them were still there when the show closed in 2023. I can only imagine what it was like for them to walk out of that theater for the last time, to close that show. If you’re curious, the base pay for a musician at Phantom was about $290 a performance. That works out to a little over $115,000 a year.

Melissa: That means there’s not a burlesque dancer named Page Turner?

David: Yeah, I made that up. But the truth is better. There is a recurring show at a small theater in Manhattan called Books and Burlesque. Every show pairs authors with burlesque dancers. The authors read, and the dancers perform an act based on the reading. There’s music with the reading. There’s a backdrop. Costumes are involved. A bookstore shows up with signed copies for purchase.

David: The show was started by a woman whose stage name is Fortune Cookie. She said she wanted to figure out how to build a new audience for the art of burlesque, and to encourage her burlesque and drag friends to find books that would resonate with them.

David: If you’re listening to this on release day, the next performance is in 2 days on Sunday the 9th. And if you’re far from Manhattan, you can watch it on a live stream for a mere $10. Readers will include Vanessa Chan reading from her debut novel, ‘The Storm We Made,’ and Annie Liontas reading from her memoir, ‘Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery.’ Performers include Rosie Tulips, Professor M, and Fortune Cookie herself. A good time is guaranteed for all.

David: That’s Two Truths and a Lie. Let’s talk about books.

Melissa: My first recommendation is Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. If you were going to slap a label on this novel, it would be historical fiction. It’s set in 1930s and ’40s New York City and has a very strong sense of place and time. It’s also a family drama, gangster noir, workplace story, and wartime adventure — with a heroine that is quite spirited and obstinate.

Melissa: This is mostly the story of Anna Kerrigan and her relationship with her father Eddie. There are lots of other people we meet along the way, as she grows from a scrappy 12-year-old girl to an adult woman who as Seen Some Things. But the bond between her and her dad is the one that drives all of the action.

When we meet Anna, it’s 1934, and she’s a precocious preteen. She’s in the car with her dad, driving to Manhattan Beach. This isn’t an unusual occurrence. She often joins him for his somewhat mysterious work — driving around, talking to people, sometimes picking things up or dropping them off. But today feels different to Anna, although she doesn’t know why.

Melissa: From there, we learn a bit about Eddie’s history. It’s classic American dream stuff. After a difficult childhood, he used his smarts to build a good life for himself. He married a beautiful girl — a dancer, no less — who loves him. He had money and respectability. Then the stock market crashed.

Melissa: Now five years later, they’re just scraping by, and Eddie is working on the fringe of the criminal underworld. But he didn’t turn crooked out of greed. He needs the money to take care of his family — and specifically, to buy a special wheelchair for his other daughter who is disabled.

Melissa: With all these family- and gangster-related balls in the air, we flash forward to 1941. Anna is 19 and working at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. Her dad has disappeared. Did he go on the lam? Is he dead? We don’t know. And neither does Anna. She’s hardened her heart to the whole situation because now she’s the financial support for herself, her sister, and her mom.

Melissa: For me, this is where the story really takes flight and becomes a WWII novel. But it has a completely different perspective on the war than other books I’ve read. It’s a thrilling depiction of what it was like in the US during the war. And it’s full of contrasts: The ‘anything goes’ attitude of nightclubs versus social rules about what nice girls do and don’t do. The opportunities for women to work at jobs usually held by men versus the lingering discrimination against them for being women. There’s a lot of ‘isn’t it cute the way girls are doing this stuff now.’

Melissa: The theme of the tenuousness of war time also comes up a lot. It’s kind of like that meme about the airport. You know it? ‘The airpot is a lawless palce. 7am? Drink a beer. Tired? Sleep on the floor? Hungry? Chips now cost $17.’

Melissa: Wartime is kind of like that, right? You’re living in a dangerous, unknowable present, and you can’t count on the future. Anna is very aware that eventually, her situation is going to change. The war will end. The men will come home. What will her life be then? As the book says, ‘Her life was a war life; the war was her life.’

Melissa: There were hints of a wild streak and stubborn grit in twelve-year-old Anna. Nineteen-year-old Anna is a force. She has a boring job inspecting ship parts at the Naval Yard and becomes convinced she should be a civilian diver. Nevermind that she’s a woman, and they don’t let girls do that kind of thing.

Melissa: The bits about the diving teams were my favorite parts of the story. The author Jennifer Egan uses all fives senses to describe the waterfront, the ships, the camaraderie, the competition. I felt like I was dropped into the cold, dark water of the East River in a 200-pound diving suit.

Melissa: I cared about Anna and the people around her. Eventually, all the plot points and characters’ experiences converge in a very satisfying way.

Melissa: Also delightful is the story of how Jennifer Egan came to write this book. During a fellowship at the New York Public Library, she learned about the big part New York City’s waterfront played in the war effort. Then she found a wartime correspondence between a man and woman who met while working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In an excellent twist of fate, she was able to visit the Yard with the now 90-year-old man who’d written those letters. She also got to try on the 200-pound diving suit used in the 1940s. And she met a woman named Andrea Motley Crabtree.

Melissa: I’m telling you her whole name because she’s a badass. Andrea Motley Crabtree. She was the first female US Army deep-sea diver and the first Black female deep-sea diver in ANY U.S. military branch. I’ll put links about her in the show notes. She is formidable, and she inspired a firecracker of a character. That’s Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan.

David: My first book is ‘Laserwriter II’ by Tamara Shopsin. ‘Laserwriter II’ is historical fiction that I have lived through. It’s about the time after computers were invented, but before they were obvious and everywhere. It’s hard to remember now, but there was a brief, shining window in the development of the computers between, say, main frames and the iPhone, where computers were cool – but not everybody knew yet.

David: The same thing happened with the Internet. At about the same time. There’s this little, bright moment where early adopters have gotten ahold of a thing and are exploring the new tool. What can I make with this? And, at least for me, that was an exciting time. You can use computers to edit music? WHOA. What’s that like? You can do darkroom manipulation of an image? You can lay out a poster! All of that stuff that we take for granted now was new.

David: Similarly, with the Internet, wikipedia was a thing that existed as an idea. A world-wide, commonly available encyclopedia that’s editable by everyone. Ten minutes before it happened, it was crazy science fiction. And then it happened and now we get on to the next set of problems. How reliable is it? How do we fund it? Who gets to decide what gets edited? And eventually, with all these moments, someone says, ‘hey! we can make money with this thing!’ and then it’s just a gold rush. Guys in suits show up, and the fun drops about 90%. But this book takes place in that liminal moment of magic.

David: It’s a coming of age story for both our lead character, 19-year-old Claire, and the industry itself. In the first chapter or so of this book, Claire gets a job at a place called TekServe. It’s the mid 90s. TekServe is a computer repair place, and a little haven for the people who are in love with computers.

David: TekServe was a real place. It had several locations, but all of the locations were along 23rd street. It was started and operated by a bunch of fuzzy, brilliant weirdos. This book really skates the line between fiction and non-. There are real people described here: Steve Buscemi makes an appearance. So do the people who founded TekServe. And then there’s a layer of characters who, I think, are fictional.

David: This is one of those books where nothing happens and everything happens. There’s a read of this story where Claire gets a job, learns some things, and then moves on. But, for me, the book was a really good reminder of a specific time. It’s a portrait of New York City as a cultural hub and a place of invention and renewal. The book is strong with the idea of people who go to New York City, looking to figure out what to do in their time, learn some things, and move on – either in New York or elsewhere. It’s a story of hope even when you may not be sure what you’re hoping for.

David: This is not the only story the author, Tamara Shopsin, has told about New York City. She was raised in a cafe run by her family. It’s called Shopsin’s. It’s still on the lower east side, not too far from Katz’s. Her father, Kenny Shopsin, was famously eccentric. He had rules for his diner. One of the rules was you couldn’t copy another person’s order. That would get you a rant from her father, and possibly an eviction from the restaurant. He also had a firm rule about one child per adult. If you had two kids, and you were alone, you had to eat somewhere else.

David: When he died in 2017, the New York Times wrote in his obituary:

Mr. Shopsin didn’t like publicity or being listed in diners’ guides because, he said, such attention had the annoying effect of attracting customers. His was a classic neighborhood restaurant, and he didn’t want it to become a tourist attraction. He was not averse to throwing someone out who didn’t seem to get the chatty, casual-clutter look and feel of the place.

Shopsin said, ‘By kicking them out, what I’m doing is respecting the fact that they don’t belong here,’ he explained.

David: Kenny and his wife Eve raised five kids out of that cafe. Tamara wrote about her experience there in a book called, ‘Arbitrary Stupid Goal.’ Had I known about that book, I would have read that first. I expect it’s an entirely different ride into the New York City of our recent past, and probably just as lovely. But the book I started with is ‘Laserwriter II.’ I found it lighthearted and sweet. If you’re curious about taking a nostalgia ride into the New York of the mid 90s, this might be your book. It’s ‘Laserwriter II’ by Tamara Shopsin.

Melissa: My second recommendation is ‘Olga Dies Dreaming’ by Xóchitl González. This is midlife coming-of-age story set in 2017 Brooklyn and Puerto Rico. The story revolves around Olga and her brother Prieto. Olga is 40 years old, very single, and a wedding planner for the ultra-rich. She’s on track to be the Puerto Rican Martha Stewart. Wealthy women on New York’s Upper East Side, Dallas, Palm Beach, and Silicon Valley feel smug telling their friends their wedding planner is the one from TV.

Melissa: Olga’s brother is equally successful. He’s a congressman for their Latinx neighborhood, ostensibly trying to smooth out the bumps of gentrification. But Pietro has some secrets. Olga and her brother are the immigrant dream: They were one of the first Puerto Rican families to live in their previously mostly-white neighborhood, and they’ve done very well for themselves.

Melissa: Except… they’re still reckoning with the past. Their mom was more devoted to political activism than motherhood. Twenty-seven years ago, she left them in the capable, loving hands of their grandmother and extended family. And then a few years later, their father — he was a troubled Vietnam vet — died from AIDS.

Melissa: I gotta say, their mom is a real piece of work. After she skipped out, they had no way to get in touch with her. But she has very annoyingly nagged them over the years through letters filled with criticism and judgment. So she’s been keeping tabs on them, but they have no way to reach her. That is some terrible parenting right there.

Melissa: Also: This book tricked me! The opening pages are a fizzy, funny dissertation on wedding napkins. It’s an excellent setup for the tone of the story and a peek into Olga’s character. I want to read you a bit:

‘The telltale sign that you are at the wedding of a rich person is the napkins. At the not-rich person’s wedding, should a waiter spill water or wine or a mixed drink of well liquor onto the napkin-covered lap of a guest, the beverage would bead up and roll off the cheap square of… polyblend fabric, down the guest’s legs, eventually pooling on the hideous, overly busy patterned carpet designed and chosen specifically to mask these such stains.

At the rich person’s wedding, however, the napkins are made of a European linen fine enough for a Tom Wolfe suit… Should the waiter spill any of the luxury bottled water, vintage wine, or custom-crafted cocktails… the napkin would, dutifully, absorb any moisture before the incident could irritate a couture-clad guest… The rich person’s wedding also never features hideous carpet. Not because the venue… might not have had one, but because they had the money to cover it over… with hardwood flooring, black and white Havana-inspired tiles, or even actual… grass… while Olga Isabel Acevedo’s job required her to worry about all of these elements and more, the present moment found her primarily concerned with the napkins. Mainly, how she could steal them when the party was over.’

Melissa: For me, this book recreates the experience of what it’s like to meet someone new. You get the public version of them first. The charming one. You learn their accomplishments, hear about their work. And then they slowly reveal more of themselves. Maybe they show a little vulnerability. They advance and retreat. Eventually, you’ve heard their whole backstory and now, you know them. You understand them, and you love them for real.

Melissa: That’s this book. And it’s not just Olga — it’s every character. Except maybe her mom. Her mom is rotten all the way down.

Melissa: This story successfully weaves so many elements. There’s commentary on the immigrant experience, gentrification, and colonialism. It includes the best explanation I’ve ever read about the challenging relationship between the US and Puerto Rico — and how that was exacerbated by the response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. It’s also about siblings and longing and what we need to feel successful.

Melissa: It also has a very strong sense of Brooklyn. Olga goes on a date to a neighborhood bar with a great jukebox that I hope exists and would very much like to find. There’s also a big family wedding that’s the exact opposite of the kind of weddings Olga plans.

Melissa: This story hits every note of the emotional scale: surprise, joy, tenderness, anger. There’s a nice romance. I was filled with rage that made my cheeks very hot whenever the mom’s letters showed up. But the story also made me laugh many times. And the ending is perfect.

Melissa: In an interview, the author Xóchitl González (so-CHILL gonzales) said this book is a love letter to Brooklyn and her Puerto Rican culture. She also said that when she was a kid, her family couldn’t afford books. She didn’t own her own book until college. But she says she traveled the world through the books at the library around the corner from her house. And she name-dropped Jane Eyre, so I’m pretty sure we should be best friends. The novel is ‘Olga Dies Dreaming’ by Xóchitl González.

David: I’m cheating. I’m cheating because I wanted to talk about a graphic novel, and I had a whole bunch of candidates. It is not hard to find representations of New York City in comic form.

David: A good place to start might be Will Eisner. He was an early cartoonist, started in the 1930s. He coined the term ‘graphic novel’ in the 70s to describe one of his works. He’s probably most famous for a character called The Spirit who was a charming masked rogue who fought crime. While Eisner’s storytelling may seem dated and heavy-handed these days, his illustrations of mid-century New York are beautiful. His pages and his inking and his lettering are just so pretty. One of the top prizes in comics is named after him — for reasons.

David: Then there’s almost every New Yorker cartoonist and cover artist. Roz Chast has a book called ‘Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?’ which is full of New York angst, but is also a fantastic book about aging. I love George Booth and his crowded apartments with manic bull terriers. There’s also that famous cover of How a New Yorker Views the World by Saul Steinberg.

David: I realized the other day that my relationship with New York City may have started with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the men who invented the Fantastic Four. They presented a city with larger-than-life characters, mighty, world-changing possibilities, and lots of tough-talking locals who weren’t afraid to step up, all against a kinetic and unstoppable cityscape. Where’s the lie?

David: But today, I wanted to talk about two other graphic novels. Both of them are more recent. The first is ‘Hello NY: An Illustrated Love Letter to the Five Boroughs,’ by Julia Rothman. Her work has a grown-up, sophisticated but still cartoonish look. Her drawings are friendly and welcoming. The New York Times called her when they wanted to do a Sunday piece about dogs in the city.

David: Her book is a love letter to her home. She grew up on City Island, a small island in the Bronx. She describes what that was like and directs the reader to a good place to get shrimp and chips on the island.

David: And the rest of the book is just like walking around town with her. She talks about her favorite places, tells little stories about them, and suggests what you might want to do or eat. She stops by the public library and talks to a librarian in the rare book division. She has a list of treasures she would want to take home from the Met and how she would display them. – Which is a great game. Some places she visits are massive — like the Met — but others are small and personal and would be easy to overlook.

David: Rothman introduced me to two places that I absolutely want to visit the next time I’m in New York. One of them is the Campbell Apartment in Grand Central Station. It’s a very swanky bar hidden in the train station. It used to be the office of a financier. It is now a cocktail lounge with restored 1920s details, a hand-painted ceiling, and an enormous fireplace. We’ll point to their site in the notes.

David: The other place on my ‘must’ list is Moscot. They’re an eyeglass store that specializes in classic styles. I looked them up online. They are exactly the frames I’ve been drawn to my entire life, and I can’t wait to visit them. How did I not know about this place? They have 23 locations all over the world and a robust site, if you’re interested.

David: The other graphic novel I wanted to mention is ‘Roaming’ by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. This is the story of three young women—maybe freshmen in college who come to the city for a long weekend. It’s their first adult vacation.

David: The book does a brilliant job of capturing that age against the city. The age of the significant hair flip. It’s the age where something happens to one of your friends off-stage for you, but you don’t have the maturity to follow up, so it remains a mystery, even though maybe it shouldn’t. There’s a very particular hot mess in this story that revolves around that age, a love triangle, and being in the city for the first time.

David: The authors are two of my favorite cartoonists working today. They did ‘This One Summer,’ which is a beautiful, evocative piece of work about being a young teen. It won the Caldecott and an Eisner. This work was equally lovely, just a few years older. This book is ‘Roaming’ by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. The first book I talked about was ‘Hello NY’ by Julia Rothman.

Melissa: My final recommendation is ‘Table for Two: Fictions’ by Amor Towles. I have a mildly tetchy relationship with short stories. I like a good spooky short story. Edgar Allan Poe got his hooks in me early. But I can get really frustrated with collections of LITERARY stories.

Melissa: Although, something you said recently, Dave, helped a lot. I was complaining that a story I read had a great setup and good characters and a vivid setting, but then it felt like nothing happened. And you said, ‘Sometimes a short story is like a piece of dark chocolate. You just kind of enjoy letting it sit on your tongue.’ That was brilliant. It really changed how I think about approaching short stories.

Melissa: Which brings me to Amor Towles new book. I really liked his first one Rules of Civility. That’s a novel about the adventures of a young woman in 1930s Manhattan. His second, A Gentleman in Moscow is one of my all-time favorite books. That’s about a Count placed under house arrest at the fancy Metropol Hotel in Moscow after the Russian Revolution.

Melissa: So, I was thrilled when Amor Towles announced he was writing another book. And then — don’t judge me, friends — I was kinda bummed when I found out it was a short story collection. But I should have known it would be great.

Melissa: ‘Table for Two’ is like a little present for people who love his work. The first half is comprised of six stories, all set in New York during different time periods. Each of these stories is completely immersive and filled with rich characters and satisfying plot turns. They gave me the serotonin boost of a novel without the multi-hour time commitment.

Melissa: The second half of the book is a novella. It’s a noirish sequel to Rules of Civility and explains what happens to the heroine Evelyn when she leaves NYC on a train and gets off in Los Angeles.

Melissa: But we’re here to talk about those New York stories. They’re a celebration of the kind of old school characters you only find in New York. And the locations are a greatest hits tour of of the city: Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of art, Carnegie Hall, fancy hotels, and social clubs.

Melissa: Taken together, the stories sort of talk to each other. They’re a love letter to the serendipity, coincidence, and quirks of fate that bring together disparate people. So this massive, iconic city shrinks down to a more human scale.

Melissa: The first story is called ‘The Line.’ It begins in a Russian village during the last days of the Tsar. I wasn’t expecting that, but in hindsight, it was an excellent way to enter the collection because it shows how New York is New York because so many New Yorkers start somewhere else. The Russian people who emigrated to New York during the 19th century changed its personality, and each of them has their own story, right?

Melissa: The hero of this pastiche is Pushkin, and he’s a remarkably good-natured, friendly fellow who kind of gently bumbles his way to good fortune simply by waiting in lines. It’s like if Kafka wrote a cheerful story.

Melissa: Another one is called The Ballad of Timothy Touchett, and it starts at the New York Public Library. I want to read you the first paragraph because it’s the perfect hook to make you want to read more. And Amor Towles packs so much about the character into a few sentences.

‘A few years before the end of the millennium, one Timothy Touchett sat in the Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library’s Fifth Avenue Branch with a copy of Maxwell Perkin’s Collected Letters before him. What had brought this young man from the suburbs of Boston to such a majestic spot on a sunlit afternoon? Better yet, what had brought him to New York in the first place? Quite simply, his determination since childhood to become a celebrated novelist.’

Melissa: Soon, Timothy has a momentous run-in with a gentleman named Peter Pennybrook, purveyor of used and rare editions. He is the platonic ideal of a tweedy rare books dealer in New York City — and he takes Timothy on an unexpected adventure.

Melissa: The stories put Amor Towles ability to be tricksy on full display. He sets up expectations then turns his story into something else entirely.

Melissa: A story called ‘Hasta Luego’ starts like a riff on the movie ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles,’ then pulls the rug out from under your feet. Another one called ‘I Will Survive’ was giving me rom-com vibes — all light and bubbly — but transformed into a story about a marriage in trouble for a surprising reason that’s both heartbreaking and weirdly delightful.

Melissa: These stories are a bite-sized chance to roam around in Amor Towles’ fully-rendered worlds, and it’s pretty great. That’s Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles.

David: Those are five books we love, set in New York City. Visit our show notes at strongsenseofplace.com for links and details. Stop by our show notes for directions to my new favorite eyeglasses shop. Or to get tickets for the Books and Burlesque show. And don’t forget to drop by our new Substack where you will meet our other brilliant, attractive, well-read listeners like you. You’ll find that at strongsenseofplace.com/substack.

David: Mel, where are we going for our next episode?

Melissa: By popular request from our Patrons, we’re going to India.

[cheerful music]

Top image courtesy of Miltiadis Fragkidis/Unsplash.