A Coney Island Reader

A Coney Island Reader

Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion

Edited by: Louis Parascandola and John Parascandola

Columbia University Press | 2014

https://doi.org/10.7312/para16572

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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.

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.

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

A Coney Island Reader

Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion

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