«New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of infinite steps and, no matter how far he went and no matter how much knowledge he had of its neighborhoods and its streets, it always gave him the feeling that he was lost»writes Paul Auster in Crystal Citythe first volume of his new york trilogypublished in France (Actes Sud) in 1987.
To get to Brooklyn, let’s leave Manhattan and its buildings. “so high that they seem imaginary”as the writer puts it in returnedvolume 2 of the trilogy (Actes Sud, 1988). The Brooklyn Bridge, with its pointed arches, can be crossed on foot. Traffic passing in the bottom lane appears “Humming of a swarm of bees.” On the other shore, the immense city It starts with a quiet neighborhood with low houses. In Brooklyn Heights there remain some wooden houses and many brownstone houses, these red sandstone houses that are accessed by a staircase. On Orange Street, where the action returnedWe discovered the small church of Plymouth and its garden with the statue of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, with his anti-slavery sermons.
The writer Gérard de Cortanze (Paul Auster’s New YorkThe Pocket Book, 2004) remembers his friend who disappeared in April, with whom he took long walks. They were walking along the Brooklyn Heights promenade, which also appears in SmokeWayne Wang’s film from a script by Paul Auster (1995). This 600-meter pedestrian promenade (bicycles prohibited) faces the skyscrapers that rise on the other side of the East River. “Paul chose to live in Brooklyn because the apartments were cheaper than in Manhattan”says Gérard de Cortanze. “His wife, Siri, was horrified at the thought of joining him there. » After a stay in Carroll Gardens, an old Italian neighborhood controlled by the mafia, the American writer settled permanently in Park Slope. Today it is a bourgeois corner that borders Prospect Park, an immense green space designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the designers of Central Park.
many faces
“I found it by chance on the 7th.my Avenue in Park Slope and followed him to find out his address so I could write to him.says Céline Curiol, who became a novelist thanks to the encouragement of Paul Auster. I was very attached to Brooklyn and its human diversity. » the movie brooklyn boogie, carried out immediately after Smoke and of which the author was co-director, recounts this multicultural abundance of city to “90 ethnic groups and 1,500 churches, synagogues and mosques”as one character points out.
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