Whitman's Brooklyn

Greg Trupiano of The Whitman Project, who led the Walt Whitman tour I wrote about a while ago, has announced the launch of the new website Whitman's Brooklyn. This is from Russell Granger, who created the site:

Whitman's Brooklyn is now live online -- please share the good news! Come enjoy this highly-immersive experience of Brooklyn's pictorial heritage. Many of the images we've uncovered have never been published online before, and most have never been seen in such a large, vivid format. Color, too! All the images can be viewed at maximum browser size, and some-- including bird's eye views and maps--can be explored using a powerful zoom-and-pan tool. The site currently contains only a portion of what we have collected and prepared. Many more remarkable images and stories will be posted over the coming weeks. The site has been built in a format to enable visitors to participate by leaving comments, questions, ideas, and stories. Join in!

Tom Otterness

My life revolves around the C line, and one of the highlights of that line are the rotund little bronze people that populate the 14th Street station. Little capitalists shaped like money bags (a more benign version of Thomas Nast’s Boss Tweed) perch contentedly on the benches, or play tug of war with giant pennies, or fall victim to toothy crocodiles that emerge from manhole covers. On my first visit to Roosevelt Island I was pleased to see Otterness’s Marriage of Real Estate and Money: a several-part morality tale perched on pilings in the shallow water. More recently, I was tickled to see Large Covered Wagon installed near the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. When you walk to the back of the wagon, you see the heads of a pioneer couple who are getting the maximum enjoyment out of their bouncy ride.

The Brooklyn Literary 100

The New York Sun recently published a list (and map) detailing the Brooklyn Literary 100. In addition to the places, many of which I’m familiar with — Fort Greene Park, Prospect Park, Ozzie’s, the Brooklyn Lyceum, Community Bookstore, Heights Books, and the Brooklyn Book Fest — there were lists of prominent writers and editors, broken down by neighborhood. As silly as it is, and Colson Whitehead pointed out just how silly, to attribute special literary qualities to the borough of Brooklyn or any of its neighborhoods, I was surprised to see that Park Slope didn’t dominate as thoroughly as I expected. It has 19 names, including Paul Auster and Jonathan Safran Foer, but so does Fort Greene, which has Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead himself. (Though didn’t I read somewhere that he had moved to somewhere like Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens?) If you throw in my own neighborhood, Clinton Hill, which many consider an extension of Fort Greene, you get 9 more names, including James Surowiecki of The New Yorker. Prospect Heights, just down the street, has 12 names, including heavy hitters like Rick Moody, Philip Gourevitch, and George Packer.