BOOKPATHS

Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

Gaby Wood follows writer Jonathan Lethem on a tour of Brooklyn, “the neighbourhood he has put on the literary map.”

We'll go this way,’ he says, and we brace ourselves against the bitter cold, walking up past the industrial buildings on Nevins Street and turning left into the quiet, remodelled brownstones on Dean. Lethem now lives, with his pregnant wife, Amy, and their two-year-old son Everett, in a one-bedroom walk-up rental six doors down from the enormous house people once thought his parents were utterly insane to buy. – from “Jonathan Lethem on the Streets of Brooklyn, by Gaby Wood, The Guardian

Greenwich Village, New York, USA

Patricia Cohen follows in the footsteps of novelist Patricia Highsmith.

Patricia Highsmith wrote 22 novels, many of them set in Greenwich Village, where she lived. But the landscape of Highsmith Country consists not only of the physical Village neighborhood, but also the dark and desperate territory of Highsmith’s psyche. – from “The Haunts of Miss Highsmith,” by Patricia Cohen, The New York Times

The Morgan Library and Museum, Manhattan, New York, U.S.

The manuscript of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is exhibited, under glass, each year during the holiday season at Manhattan’s Morgan Library and Museum.  This year, however, they allowed The New York Times “to photograph and display the entire handwritten manuscript online.”  Browse it here.

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“A Christmas Rewrite, as Dickens Edits Dickens”, by Alison Leigh Cowan

The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, New York, U.S.

The exhibition, A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy, is at the Morgan Library and Museum through March 14, 2010.

This exhibition explores the life, work, and legacy of Jane Austen (1775–1817), regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. Offering a close-up portrait of the iconic British author, whose popularity has surged over the last two decades with numerous motion picture and television adaptations of her work, the show provides tangible intimacy with Austen through the presentation of more than 100 works, including her manuscripts, personal letters, and related materials, many of which the Morgan has not exhibited in over a quarter century. – from The Morgan Library and Museum Website

Manhattan, New York, U.S.

Manhattan, New York, U.S.

Jeffrey Brown talks with Jonathan Lethem, whose new novel Chronic City is set in a Manhattan “that is very recognizable…while also surreal.”

Tarrytown and North Tarrytown, New York, U.S.

As Halloween “looms,” Tarrytown and North Tarrytown are the perfect, “eerie,” destinations.

Tarrytown, which sits high on a hill and has majestic views of the Hudson River, claims as a native son none other than Washington Irving, the author of 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and other spooky tales. Its sister village, North Tarrytown, voted to rename itself Sleepy Hollow in 1996. So a visit to both villages is worthwhile, especially as Halloween looms and Irving’s tales come to life — at least in the imagination. -- from "On the Trail, an Eerie Tale," by Kate Stone Lombardi, The New York Times

Poets House, Manhattan, New York, U.S.

Poets House opens in Lower Manhattan.

For nearly 25 years Poets House has been an anchor for poets and poetry lovers. It lodged first in a home-economics room at the High School for the Humanities in Chelsea before settling in on the second floor of a loft building at 72 Spring Street in SoHo. On Friday, Poets House opens its spacious new home in Battery Park City hard by the Hudson River at the corner of Murray Street. – from “Transparent New Home for Poetry,” by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times

Poets House Website

Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

A Walker in the City, by Alfred Kazin (Orlando, FL: Harvest Books, 1974; first published in 1951)

Returning to Brownsville, Brooklyn, in adulthood, Alfred Kazin retraces and remembers the walks of his youth, increasingly widening his circle as he moves from boyhood to manhood.  Lyrical, nostalgic (in the best of ways), and historical, readers move with him into “the vast city of New York in the decade before the Depression.”  A Walker in the City offers a memorable journey.

Every time I go back to Brownsville it is as if I had never been away.  From the moment I step off the train at Rockaway Avenue and smell the leak out of the men’s room, then the pickles from the stand just below the subway steps, an instant rage comes over me, mixed with dread and some unexpected tenderness.  It is over ten years since I left to live in ‘the city’ – everything just out of Brownsville was always ‘the city.’  Actually I did not go very far; it was enough that I could leave Brownsville.  Yet as I walk those familiarly choked streets at dusk and see the old women sitting in front of the tenements, past and present become each other’s faces; I am back where I began. – from A Walker in the City, by Alfred Kazin

Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York

Steven Kurtz talks visits with Amy Sohn, whose life and satirical novel, Prospect Park West, are set in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Ms. Sohn said she was surprised that some readers think she portrays Park Slope in a negative light. ‘I guess the book pokes fun at the more easily satirized aspects of the neighborhood, but I still wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.’ – from “A Park Slope Novel Seems a Little Too Real,” by Steven Kurutz, The New York Times

Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History: the Nation’s Nature Center, Jamestown, New York, U.S.

Nature Center, Museum, Nature Store – the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History “continues the legacy of Roger Tory Peterson by promoting the teaching and study of nature, and to thereby create knowledge of and appreciation and responsibility for the natural world.”  Since Peterson’s death in 1996, “the Institute has accessioned a very large amount of Peterson’s body of work and has become the key destination for those interested in Peterson’s contributions to science and society as the great naturalist of the 20th century.”  The Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.; and Sunday (except for January-March), 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.  For additional travel information and online resources, visit the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History website.

(Photograph from the DiscoverJamestown.com.)