Six top books set in, and about, New York

Vince Passaro is the author of the novel Crazy Sorrow.

His criticism and essays have appeared in many prominent publications, including Harper’s Magazine, of which he is a contributing editor, The Nation, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Elle, Salon, and others, along with short fiction in such national magazines and literary journals as Esquire, GQ, Open City, Agni, Story, Boulevard, and Quarterly West. His first book, Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel, was published in 2002. He lives a few miles north of New York City in an old Huguenot town with his wife, son, and a smattering of film cameras, fountain pens, and other fellow-traveling refuse from the mid-20th century.

At Lit Hub Passaro tagged six favorite books set in, and about, New York. One title on the list:

Norman Mailer, An American Dream

Mailer often worked close to the edge, and here he was working as close to the edge as possible. It is the story of a man who marries into a corrupt political/financial family unmistakably modeled on the Kennedys; it was written in installments on monthly deadline for Esquire in late 1963 and through 1964, right in the teeth of national mourning for the slain president. An amazing, daring, dark work, set over three days in NYC, with writing sometimes sublime and other times ridiculously over-the-top as only Mailer could be. The first lines, so you can’t mistake the themes: “I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes and both of us had just been elected to Congress.” It flies from there. Almost literally. With one of American literature’s great, weary, existential, NYC Irish cop.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue