Does Not Look Like Catey Shaw
The term “Brooklynites” has changed. You probably used to know what that meant, but I have no idea what you are picturing. Now, at least for my generation, Brooklynite probably refers to some 20-something that got bored in Michigan and moved to the borough to pursue acting or like, vintage watch repair or some shit. Brooklynite probably refers to someone who lives in Bushwick. Yeah, they definitely live in Bushwick. Wait, what’s the difference between Brooklyn and Bushwick? Aren’t they like, the same?
Let’s face it: there is more to Brooklyn than what we see in Lena Dunham’s Girls, or that now infamous cliché music video “Brooklyn Girls” (or “Brooklyn Boys”) Not to say there isn’t truth to Girls – really, many 20-somethings experiences probably looks just like that. They probably do only run into racial minorities on the bus on the way to another shift at Café Grumpy. They probably never leave Bushwick.
So it’s new, at this point in the cultural flood of violet-haired femmes flooding into the neighborhood, to find a book that focuses on the other Brooklyn. On the babies who grew up there, thought they might leave, then had some kids with a south-side Brooklyn girl and ending up staying. It’s new to read about the lives and times of Marine Park rather than straight-up Bushwick.
And so Mark Chiusano frames his 17 stories about the people of Marine Park. People you know have Brooklyn rolling through their blood by the way they talk about “going into the city” as if the other boroughs are another world. Little kids who go from shoveling your walkway to holding down the jobs your uncle used to have.
Many of the stories revolve around a pair of these boys, Lorris and Jamison, the first-person seer of a good portion of the book. Their experience looks nothing like what I’d expect from binge watching too much Girls – it seems so much more community, so much more neighbor-helping/knowing-neighbor, almost more small town. The boys age throughout these stories, find love, find their niche. While Lorris goes off elsewhere to college, only coming home for emergencies and major holidays, Jamison stays. Something about Marine Park keeping his inside its boundaries.
There’s other characters as well. One a sleaze who sells goods like cigarettes and pills to grade school kids before going home and jerking off with one hand holding a firearm (I KNOW this guy! I know him!) Another a couple who’ve raised their kids in the area, been there seemingly forever and look like they’re going to stay seemingly forever. Another a group of friends that pass herpes around, one to the other to a boy to a girl. All people you probably remember from your own neighborhood, really. While little seems to tie these characters to Lorris and Jamison besides their neighborhood, reading the new characters serves at least to show the other experiences of residents besides that of the young male protagonists.
While I had fun reading through the stories, discovering this new neighborhood, there’s little in terms of heart or juicy sentences that’s really making it stick for me. I had hopes this would like, catch and capture a significant time/area/culture much like Let the Great World Spin, but there’s no comparing. Maybe more than anything, Marine Park can be culturally significant right now to make us remember that, yes, there are real people in Brooklyn that live here and grew up here and don’t look like Catey Shaw.
