Literary Boston
A big new Boston Book Festival is bringing authors from around the country to Copley Square this weekend. It’s a celebration of all things books, and we thought we’d use this event as an opportunity to examine Boston’s literary life.
We’ll be talking about books and stories that use Boston as a place setting, but also about Boston as a place that promotes literature. What are your favorite books about Boston? Do you feel like you live in Henry James’s version of Boston, or Dennis Lehane’s? Do you identify with Henry David Thoreau’s Concord as described in “Walden,” or with Michael Patrick MacDonald’s South Boston, from “All Souls?” Comment here, or tune in Friday at 1.
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My vote goes to the late David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest. As far as I know he only spent a couple of years living around here as a grad student, but boy was he a keen observer and listener.
As a very small and random token of what I mean, start with page 128 (of the 2006 paperback edition.) Continue with most of the episodes (?) featuring Don Gately. Continue on to the passages that begin on page 716 (ibid) about certain parts of Cambridge.
There is an early monologue about Ray Tony that I cannot find, but it demonstrates a particularly fine ear for a certain kind of Bostonian most of us never have the pleasure of hearing.
http://www.boston.com/globe/bestofnewengland/books/?sort=globe_rank
I still feel the message of class in the Rise of Silas Lapham — truly one of the best and funniest novels set in Boston — expresses Boston culture in ways that are still quite contemporary. Better times,sure, but it’s still there….
And the Last Hurrah? Good read during this political season and yet it never mentions “Boston.” Just brilliant.
Also, let’s be clear that BUR isn’t quite right about the “first-ever” Boston Book Festival since there was one in the late 80s or early 90s in Copley Square for a few years before it died.
Jay,
Howell’s book was my second choice. This is a VERY odd coincidence. I think it ought to be better known than it is. I get some odd looks from people when I tell them how funny it is, but I push it on them anyway.
My voice of Boston is poet John Wieners, a post-Beat and contemporary of Allen Ginsburg, who wrote many many poems about our city while living on Joy Street in the shadow of Beacon Hill from the early 70’s until the 90’s. His writing is crisp, sad and convincing; and his voice is sadly missed.