I celebrated my birthday last week in New York City, my second visit ever to the metrop. “Autumn in New York,/Why does it seem so inviting?” goes the song, which was written by Vernon Duke in 1933. My answer to that question: I’ve spent so much time in this city in my imagination that being in the actual place feels like a fever dream where fact and fiction, past and present, get all mixed up together. In books, I’ve eavesdropped on Dorothy Parker cracking jokes with Robert Benchley and the gang at the Algonquin Round Table. Peered through the secret window into Nero Wolfe’s office to see who was sitting in the red chair. Imbibed bathtub gin with the Fitzgeralds. Explored the eateries of Greenwich Village with Calvin Trillin. Waited for the evil editor to get her comeuppance in countless chick lit novels.
“Autumn in New York/Is often mingled with pain.” Second verse, sadder than the first. Up to the day before our visit, weather forecasters were predicting a week of sun and mild temperatures. We packed accordingly, researched walking tours of Manhattan, made a list of attractions, such as the Empire State Building, to visit, and generally planned to be out and about as much as possible. Then we exited Penn Station to a downpour.
In my 20s, while living in Chicago, I started reading a lot of Lost Generation writers. The Lost Generation was comprised of people who came to adulthood around the time of World War I, who’d had their expectations and ideals disrupted by that cataclysm. Broken, or at least dented, they wrote on. Many were based in New York, and they depicted the city in a way that made it feel equally gritty and glamorous. I was living in a big city and slowly recovering from a small but volcanic cataclysm. These books helped me dodge the lava and learn—especially from the writings of Dorothy Parker—how to be a city girl.
What to do in New York in the rain? First up: visit an iconic bookstore featured on various TV shows and movies. Dave and I acquired $10 tourist umbrellas from CVS and set out for The Strand Bookstore. This would be a walk of about 35 blocks, but of course New York blocks are very short. We entered and I was immediately gobsmacked. The place was a cathedral to the written word! Long stacks, twice my height or more, every shelf packed. Ladders everywhere. So many colors and bindings…There were also lots of tchotchkes, with perhaps more socks, bookmarks, totes, and postcards than strictly necessary, but books were first, front and center.
The Strand was originally one of around three dozen bookstores in an area of town called Book Row. The other stores are gone—out of business or elsewhere. Reportedly the Strand has a total of around 2.5 million books spread among several locations and a warehouse. We browsed for a long time. I made my way up and down ladders, feeling a bit lightheaded, albeit without falling off and into the arms of a handsome stranger even once. It was on a low shelf in a corner that I found and bought a new-to-me Calvin Trillin book, Remembering Denny. Calvin Trillin, who may still live in Greenwich Village, not far away. Who wrote a piece about this store, “Three Strand-Hounds” for The New Yorker.
Two days later it was still raining. We’d been to museums and jazz clubs, so culture-culture-culture. I’d felt a little disappointed that the trad jazz trio in the Flatiron Room hadn’t included “Autumn in New York” in their set. Now we were in a Times Square diner discussing whether the Empire State Building would be worth a try. (Conclusion: no. We got thrown out of the ESB the next morning, very politely, but that’s a story for another time…)
It was getting harder by the minute to stay happy despite the weather. Dave’s $10 umbrella had lost a structural spoke in the winds coming off the East River and had been laid rather forcefully to rest in a trash bin on 36th Street. My baseball cap was so soaked that after a night’s drying in the hotel room it was still damp. Down the block was the M&M Store, but we weren’t in the mood for candy of any color. Instead we headed to another bookstore, a secondhand place called BOOKOFF.
This shop was less magnificent than The Strand, but still quite browsable. There was a loft full of books, a basement packed with manga, and a main floor with DVDs and other media. There was also an enormous unclassified pile of hardbacks along the side of the staircase to the loft. That’s where I happened on The English Wife, a mystery set in Gilded Age New York by Lauren Willig, who’s a writer based in NYC. Maybe our umbrellas had crossed paths at some point this week.
“It’s autumn in New York/It’s good to live it again.” Verse three, a conclusion of sorts. The rain had petered off a bit while we were in the bookstore. We were hungry again after another walk of many blocks. We rambled through the Theater District in search of pizza. “Hey!” said Dave. “There’s the Algonquin.” He was right. Dorothy Parker and the rest! I wanted to time-travel back to 1922.
Sadly in 2022 there was no pizza on the Algonquin menu and the burgers cost upwards of $25. I snapped a picture instead. We ate eventually at John’s Pizzeria, which is a couple of doors down from Sardi’s, a restaurant mentioned by many New York writers and featuring caricatures of some of them, including Mrs. Parker. John’s has its variation on the Sardi’s theme, a mural featuring various celebrities and notables. The bit of it next to our booth showed Andy Warhol, John and Yoko, Marilyn Monroe, and various others. No Dorothy that I could see. The pizzeria’s only been in operation since the 1990s, too late for her to have visited, but the building originally housed the Gospel Tabernacle Church, a missionary training college…and a bookstore. I wondered if Dorothy ever dodged into it on a rainy autumn day.
the jeanSpace 