Brooklyn Fictions

Vast and diverse, Brooklyn is often portrayed in literature as a place of traditional community values and face-to-face relations, distinct from anonymous, capital-driven Manhattan. Brooklyn Fictions discovers what such representations of the New York borough can teach us about diversity and the individual, the local and the global. Combining analysis of popular texts such as Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever with more canonical novels such as Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude, this study draws on the work of a variety of theorists on community and globalization and uses Brooklyn as a case study for an exploration of the complex relationship between romantic ideals of community and global economic forces. With cites often depicted as sites of conflict and fear, this is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the contemporary urban community and the ethical issues involved in conceptualizing and portraying it in literature.

The first monograph that exclusively and specifically deals with ... "books about Brooklyn" ... Peacock's pioneering effort is coupled with his interdisciplinary approach of analysing representations of Brooklyn by making use of literary analysis and enriching it with the approaches of literary sociology and sociological theory ... [Its] well-executed interdisciplinary approaches, rich analyses, and structural inventiveness combine ... [to] make for worthwhile and insightful reading for anyone interested in New York City or cultural representations of urban spaces, in general.

James Peacock is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literatures at Keele University in the UK. He is the author of Jonathan Lethem (2012) and has published widely on contemporary American fiction, detective fiction and transatlantic literary relations.