Gilbert Sorrentino's Bay Ridge

Now that the wheels have all turned, the ratchets clicked and the jewels spun on and on into my next decade, I see that despite the fleeting sands through the hour glass there is always time for reflection and looking backward.

In this case, I came across a short story, "The Spindizzy Papers" that I had written in a continuing Ed class at the New School for Social Research ( now just the more branded and Californic sounding  "The New School"). Of course what made the class so memorable was that it had the very good fortune to be taught by novelist Gilbert Sorrentino who also in his long career as a writer and teacher of writing also worked at Stanford University among other ivory towers.

Sorrentino was very encouraging and generous in his praise of my manuscript but I am writing here not of my own personal forays down literary cul de sacs, but instead to share an article I found about the author's Brooklyn roots generally and the grist and source material that Brooklyn and Bay Ridge specifically provided in his writing. Other than a blissful summer journalism class as a high school student at Xaverian (although Bishop Ford remains my alma mater) I cede Bay Ridge to my sister and her family for whom many of these locations will reflect pride of place and familiar stomping grounds. I do remember the Bay Ridge of bars more than churches where many of my friends from Windsor Terrace and Park Slope played in bands in the 70s.

     Gilbert Sorrentino 1929-2006

For now, a short survey on the repossession of Gilbert Sorrentino as The Bard of Bay Ridge in recent publications:

A Guided Tour of Sorrentino's Brooklyn / 

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Gilbert+Sorrentino's+Bay+Ridge%3A+A+Guided+Tour.-a0273789263

An Electric Literature review of his Brooklyn oeuvre along with his childhood friend Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, a book, to put it mildly, that portrays a very pregentrified vision of the borough http://electricliterature.com/gilbert-sorrentino-the-lost-laureate-of-brooklyn/

Mr Sorrentino passed in 2006. His son Christopher, author of Trance and Sound on Sound, among other works, lives in NYC.

As always, for all writers everywhere, Speak, Memory!

--Anthony Napoli

Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn