A Coney Island Reader

Published by Columbia University Press 2014

A Coney Island Reader

Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion

Edited by: Louis Parascandola and John Parascandola

https://doi.org/10.7312/para16572

Overview
Contents

About this book

Featuring a stunning gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers--including Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, José Martí, Maxim Gorky, Federico García Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe--this anthology is the first to focus on the unique history and transporting experience of a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape.Moody, mystical, and enchanting, Coney Island has thrilled newcomers and soothed native New Yorkers for decades. With itsFeaturing a stunning gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers—including Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, José Martí, Maxim Gorky, Federico García Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe—A Coney Island Reader is the first collection to focus on the unique history and transporting experience of a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape. Coney Island has long offered a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places, and events. This anthology captures the highs and lows of that sensation, with works that imagine Coney Island as a restful resort, a playground for the masses, and a symbol of America's democratic spirit, as well as a Sodom by the sea, a garish display of capitalist excess, and a paradigm of urban decay. As complex as the city of which it is a part, Coney Island engenders limitless perspectives, a composite inspiring everyone who encounters it to sing its electric song. fantasy entertainments, renowned beach foods, world-class boardwalk, and expansive beach, it provides a welcome respite from the city's dense neighborhoods, unrelenting traffic, and somber grid. Coney Island has long offered a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places, and events, creating, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti once wrote, "a Coney Island of the mind." This anthology captures the highs and lows of that sensation, with works that imagine Coney Island as a restful resort, a playground for the masses, and a symbol of America's democratic spirit, as well as a Sodom by the sea, a garish display of capitalist excess, and a paradigm of urban decay. As complex as the city of which it is a part, Coney Island engenders limitless perspectives, a composite inspiring everyone who encounters it to sing its electric song.

Featuring a stunning gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers--including Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, José Martí, Maxim Gorky, Federico García Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe--this anthology is the first to focus on the unique history and transporting experience of a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape.

Moody, mystical, and enchanting, Coney Island has thrilled newcomers and soothed native New Yorkers for decades. With its fantasy entertainments, renowned beach foods, world-class boardwalk, and expansive beach, it provides a welcome respite from the city's dense neighborhoods, unrelenting traffic, and somber grid. Coney Island has long offered a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places, and events, creating, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti once wrote, "a Coney Island of the mind." This anthology captures the highs and lows of that sensation, with works that imagine Coney Island as a restful resort, a playground for the masses, and a symbol of America's democratic spirit, as well as a Sodom by the sea, a garish display of capitalist excess, and a paradigm of urban decay. As complex as the city of which it is a part, Coney Island engenders limitless perspectives, a composite inspiring everyone who encounters it to sing its electric song.

Author information

Louis J. Parascandola is professor of English at Long Island University. He is the editor of "Look for Me All Around You": Anglophone Caribbean Immigrants in the Harlem Renaissance and coeditor of In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond.

John Parascandola taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before serving as chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and as Public Health Service Historian. He is the author of The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline and Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America.

Reviews

From Nathan's Hotdogs and the Wonder Wheel to end-of-season gloom and recession, Coney sings the bright and dim electric song of Brooklyn's iconic peninsula. This literary anthology unfolds the layers of the unique destination while enhancing the experience with historical photos.

Raanan Geberer:
If one is interested in the history of Coney Island, A Coney Island Reader is a must.

A comprehensive anthology of writings on a unique place in Brooklyn.... A must-read compilation for anyone who has ever visited Coney Island at least once if not many times and has fond (or perhaps not-so-fond) memories of this important landmark attraction.

Sam Roberts:
An overdue anthology that vividly paints Brooklyn's seaside playground in psychedelic prose and poetry.

Annaliese Griffin:
Coney Island might seem an unlikely muse, but in a city that has always been home to writers of all stripes, the seaside enclave has consistently driven pen to paper, fingertips to keyboard.

June Sawyers:
A Coney Island Reader is a wonderful collection of fiction and nonfiction, poetry and journalism, memoirs and official government reports accompanied by evocative photographs and illustrations. The cover alone captures the essence of the place: fun, chaotic, unpredictable.

The ever-contradictory nature of Coney Island is brought to light in this collection of literature from some of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' most prominent writers.

Dick Zigun, Artistic Director, Coney Island USA:
An amazing Americana anthology of Coney fact-fiction-poetry-tabloid news and government propaganda, many pieces obscure, a few famous yet so hard to find all bound together in what now becomes the definitive and best beach book read about the Island that invented beach leisure.

Michael Immerso, Author, Coney Island: The People's Playground:
A Coney Island Reader brings together a vibrant collection of voices that chronicle and critique Coney Island's extraordinary history from its formation to its most recent phase of revitalization, with all the glow and glitter of Luna Park.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xix
A Note on the text Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxi
Selected chronology of coney island Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxiii
[Clam-Bake At Coney Island] Walt Whitman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
Acconey Island Charles Dawson Shanly Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
To Coney Island William Henry Bishop Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
Coney Island José Martí Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
Coney Island’S Failing Days Stephen Crane Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Coney Island Julian Ralph Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
Marvelous Coney Island Guy Wetmore Carryl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
Human Need Of Coney Island Richard Le Gallienne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Boredom Maxim Gorky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
The Master Showman of Coney Island Peter Lyon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
Amusing the Million Frederic Thompson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
The way of the girl Belle Lindner Israels Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
Why Is Coney? Reginald Wright Kauffman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	112
The Coney Island Excursion Kathy Peiss Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
Samantha at Coney Island and a Thousand other Islands Marietta Holley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
Coney Island Sara Teasdale Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
The Greater Coney O. Henry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
Dreamland Kevin Baker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
In Dreams begin Responsibilities Delmore Schwartz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	146
Sunday Robert Olen Butler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Ruins Help Draw 350,000 To Coney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
The Tingling, Tangling Tango as ’Tis Tripped at Coney Isle Djuna Barnes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
New Cosmopolis James Huneker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Human Nature with the Brakes Off—Or: Why the Schoolma’Am Walked into the sea Edward F. Tilyou Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
Coney Giuseppe Cautela Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
Coney Island E. E. Cummings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Into the Night Life Henry Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Now and then Joseph Heller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
The Electric Michelangelo Sarah Hall Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Attachment to Letter to Mayor Fiorello Laguardia Robert Moses Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224
To Heaven by Subway Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
Coney Amram Ducovny Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Stranger At Coney Island Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
A Coney Island of the Mind Lawrence Ferlinghetti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
The Warriors Sol Yurick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Coney Island in November Josephine W. Johnson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
My son the Murderer Bernard Malamud Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	264
Mayor Blasts ta Brass on Coney Island Debacle George Todd Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
Kwan’S Coney Island Edward Hoagland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
Coney Island 1969 Edwin Torres Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Coney Island Colson Whitehead Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	288
A Coney island of the mind Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
City Planning Begins Public Review on Rezoning of Coney Island New York City Department of City Planning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Comments on the Revised Draft Scope of Analysis for Coney Island Rezoning Project Municipal Art Society Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Confessions of a Coney Island Sideshow Performer Donald Thomas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	306
A Coney Island of the Mind Maureen F. McHugh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	310
Appendix Coney Island in Movies and Music Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	317
Permissions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
Foreword Kevin Baker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 360
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 25
- Other: <B>B&W Illus.: </B>25,

eBook

Published: December 9, 2014
ISBN: 9780231538190