Acknowledgments

The front matter of The Brooklyn Follies includes nothing more than a title page and dedication to delay its get-right-to-it first line: “I was looking for a quiet place to die.” Lest we think, Oh, dear, this isn’t going to be one of those kinds of books, is it?, Auster follows with, “Someone recommended Brooklyn…” Cheap joke? Maybe, but I don’t care. I already love this guy Nathan Glass.

Auster has already scored points with me by his lack of an acknowledgements page in the front or back of the book—very old school. Though I don’t have first editions of Jane Eyre, Persuasion, The Sound and the Fury, or Mrs. Dalloway, and therefore can’t be certain, I bet Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf didn’t thank their loved ones, writing groups, agents, and writing colonies at the end of their books. Yes, thanks to the current plethora of award ceremonies, (from the Bloggers Choice Awards to the GSN Game Show Hosts Awards) everyone gets to acknowledge the people who helped with their success, so why not authors? But directors, actors, and even games show hosts don’t make an appearance right after the film, play, or The Price Is Right to earnestly thank their support system. I’m being cranky, I know, and perhaps having spent time as a copyeditor, and taking no pleasure in having to track down the proper spellings of lists of friends and pets contributes to my bad temper. But after that little shiver, or sigh, or smile that one hopes to experience after reading the last line of a good book, who wants to turn the page and read about those who contributed to the process of making the book? Let me stay in Never Land! I don’t have to read it, of course. And maybe I’m just being a spoiled kid wanting my story clean without the messy encumbrances of the author’s life.

But to return to the pleasures of The Brooklyn Follies: Not a lot has happened (I’m just halfway in the book). Nathan Glass, in his sixties, dying, and recently divorced, moves back to Brooklyn after not having been there for 56 years. He meets up with his nephew, becomes friends with the local bookseller, and has minor adventures meeting other inhabitants of the neighborhood. And that’s it. But Nathan feels like my pal, and his exploits could be told over a bowl of chicken soup at his favorite diner; it’s a comfortable book with just enough cynicism to save it from being precious. Unlike most of my voyages to Brooklyn, I’m transported effortlessly.