photo credit: Mossaiq

After you explore Omnivoracious’s selections for New York, you’ll understand why I was dragging me feet on choosing just one…  Here is their take on this exciting state:

I tried to take a cue from New York magazine’s 40th anniversary canon: the book had to be “unmistakably New Yorky.” They had the benefit of limiting their picks to the past 40 years, though, while we’re looking at everything from Washington Square to Lush Life (both among my honorable mentions). Certain books immediately sprang to mind–Bright Lights, Big City, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Catcher in the Rye (that’s the camera shy Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye author photo, later removed from future printings, gracing our authorial state quarter today–what I wouldn’t give for a Jerome David Salinger coin to carry around in my pocket!)–and within 10 minutes I had a longlist of over 100 books. And as for “unmistakably New Yorky,” it was painful for me to leave Don DeLillo’s panoramic Underworld, with its “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” prologue (and it’s iconic cover, which took on new meaning after 9/11), on the bench (let alone Great Jones Street). I’ll admit it’s a pretty NYC-centric lineup, but I tried to represent upstate and beyond the boroughs as best I could. Here it is… one man’s books of New York.

• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.” With that killer opening sentence, Jay McInerney kicked off a 200-page second-person-plural tour through a young Manhattanite’s dark, downward spiral, and joined the bold-faced names among the Page Six crowd as part of the Literary Brat Pack. Over lunch in Seattle Jay offered that Brightness Falls is his favorite among his own books, but his debut remains my personal pick. Part of the of-the-’80s Vintage Contemporaries Original lineup, the book, features iconic New York cover art, where, like in DeLillo’s Underworld, the World Trade Center towers stand forever in memory.)
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (One wrong turn in the South Bronx sends WASPy Master of the Universe Sherman McCoy on a dizzying journey through the landscape of New York. Wolfe spared no one in first novel, turning his satirical eye on tabolid reporters, DAs, Wall Street bankers, clergy, politicians, and an entire city. While the film adaptation tanked, Julie Salamon’s  The Devil’s Candy offers a thoroughly entertaining behind-the-scenes chronicle of a its colossal failure.)
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (Stewart O’Nan claimed Catcher for his Pennsylvania list, but you can’t have the Books of New York without J.D. Salinger. Beyond Holden wandering through Central Park and wondering where the ducks go in the winter, Salinger’s eccentric Glass family, as seen in Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction, were also New Yorkers, raised on the Upper East Side.)
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (In Ellison’s classic–his debut, and his only novel published while he was alive–a young, nameless black man struggles with his identity in the streets of New York. In 2003, an Invisible Man sculpture was unveiled as part of the Ralph Ellison Memorial in Harlem.)
• Time and Again by Jack Finney (Gramercy Park and the gothic Dakota building play central roles in this time-travel mystery that shifts 90 years between two eras of life of New York.)
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (An American tragedy played out over a New York summer. “I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away. There’s something very sensuous about it–overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”)
• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (”The Chekhov of the Suburbs” turned Westchester County into Cheever Country.)
• The Fortress of Solitude by Johnathan Letham (The Bard of Boerum Hill’s Motherless Brooklyn could also be here, but the City is a character itself in this time-capsule tour of Brooklyn from the ’70s through the ’90s.)
• The Alienist by Caleb Carr (A well-researched historical thriller about a serial killer loose in 1896 New York, with Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt part of the team on the case.)
• Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (Harry Houdini, J.P. Morgan, Stanford White, and Sigmund Freud are just a few of the historical figures woven into the historical tapestry of Doctorow’s New York story.)
• Ironweed by William Kennedy (This Great Depression-set story is part of lifelong Albany resident William Kennedy’s “Albany Cycle.”)
• Side Effects by Woody Allen
• The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
• Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante (Full disclosure: though he probably couldn’t pick me out of a lineup, Sante was my thesis adviser at grad school, but connections aside, his debut about New York’s “bad old days” (1840-1920), remains one of my favorite New York books.)
• Here Is New York by E.B. White
• Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley (The city lost a great writer last year with the passing of the author and activist, who was made New York’s first State Writer in 1989.)
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
• Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
• The Andy Warhol Diaries by Andy Warhol
• Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler (A kaleidoscopic account of a historic summer in the city: Reggie Jackson, mayoral politics, blackouts, punk rock, the Son of Sam, Studio 54.)
• The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
• Frank O’Hara: Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
• The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scences at The New York Times by Gay Talese
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
• The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead (Whitehead offers a multi-layered, metaphysical tour of the city. “No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey’s, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge… when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.”)
• Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.
• The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud (A tale of the “the smart, sophisticated, anxious young people who think of themselves as the cultural elite.”)
• Whitman: Poetry and Prose by Walt Whitman
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
• The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker edited by Robert Mankoff

Curious about what states we’ve done so far and which ones are on deck?

Photo by marxchivist

First, from Melanie Jones:

Alabama: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (check out my To Kill A Mockingbird Sample Kit!)

Michigan: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides

Alaska: The Man Who Swam With Beavers by Nancy Lord

Arizona: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

North Dakota: Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Vermont: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Hawaii: Heads by Harry by Lois-ann Yamanaka

Georgia: Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones

Massachusettes: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Oregon: Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

And I happily borrowed the collective wisdom of Omnivoracious for

• Delaware: Marisa de los Santos (and W.D. Snodgrass, Robert Montgomery Bird, Jonathan Kellerman… they are choosing an author for every electoral vote…)

And I went out on my own for…

Florida: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Nora Zeale Hurston

Minnesota: In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien

Wisconsin: When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton

Louisiana: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (Jones’ pick) and The Awakening by Kate Chopin (my pick)

Colorado: Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Maryland: Anything by Anne Tyler

Georgia: Awakening by Kate Chopin

Ohio: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Arkansas: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Virginia: John Grisham

Idaho: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

North Carolina: Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

Tennesee: Run by Ann Patchett

New Jersey: Anything by Janet Ivanovich

Texas: Anything by Elmer Kelton

Connecticut: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

Montana: The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie

Utah: Edward Abbey

South Carolina: Pat Conroy

Iowa: Wallace Stegner

Pennsylvania: John Updike and James Michener

Missouri: Mark Twain

New Hampshire: Robert Frost

Kentucky: Robert Penn Warren

California: John Steinbeck

Wondering where your state is? Coming soon… In the meantime, weigh in on future picks!

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