Seven books that show Pittsburgh is the best place to come of age

Anna Bruno is the author of Fine Young People and Ordinary Hazards. She teaches at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Previously, Bruno managed public relations and marketing for technology and financial services companies in Silicon Valley. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an MBA from Cornell University, and a BA from Stanford University. She lives in Iowa City with her husband, two sons, and blue heeler.

At Electric Lit Bruno tagged "seven books that show Pittsburgh is the best place to come of age—at any age." One title on the list:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

Chabon’s debut is the tragicomic coming-of-age of Art Bechstein, during the summer after he graduates from college. Art makes friends and lovers, exploring his sexual identity as he reckons with his mobster father’s sins. After meeting his buddy, Cleveland, at the boiler plant, which Art affectionately calls the Cloud Factory, they head out to collect illegal interest for Uncle Lenny, a local loan shark. It is on this journey that Art gets his first street lesson in economics, “the precise measurement of shit eating, it’s the science of misery.” Nothing captures the feeling of growing up quite like Art’s Museum of Real Life. He is a tourist in his own city, a spectator amused by the wretched circumstances of other people’s lives, until finally, he sees the world for what it is.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue