Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn

by Harvey Swados, Grace Paley (Preface)

There was a time when New York was everything to me: my mother, my mistress, my Mecca, when I could no more have wanted to live any place else than I could have conceived of myself as a daddy, disciplining my boy and dandling my daughter.

So begins "Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn", which gives its title to Harvey Swados's collected stories. In this beautiful and heartbreaking novella, Swados describes a generation "aflame with romance and disillusion," in search of pleasures and answers, and shows how the demands of love and life temper its hopes and fears. It is a perennial story, told by Swados in straightforward and lyrical prose with tremendous sympathy, and without doubt one of the most enduring achievements of postwar American fiction.

Harvey Swados's many splendid stories speak of work, friendship, and family. They are about the common world, as well as the final loneliness from which the common world cannot protect us. And yet Swados, as Richard Gilman has written, was above all concerned with "the breakthrough into true feeling, the attainment of moral dignity, and the linking up with others through compassion."

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, American, New York, Literary Fiction, 20th Century

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Harvey Swados was an American social critic and author of novels, short stories, essays and journalism.

Reviews

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only found out about Mr. Swados' work after perusing the stacks at a bookstore in Manhattan, and was intrigued by the haunting cover which is an image from director John Cassavettes' film "Shadows". Then an author friend recommended his work to me, and the verdict? Mr. Swados' work is a collective meditation on loneliness, the inability to connect, and the Postwar angst of Americans after World War II, the Korean War, and the 1940s and 1950s.

Mr. Swados for me is one of the more obscure American writers who somehow eluded readers during his heydey, and having read his work reminded me a lot of Richard Yates, Hemingway, Updike and Cheever. Except his writing of loneliness and savage love is a lot more Yates than the rest of the bunch of writers I've listed. Among the stories I enjoyed are:

The title story is about the angst of living in a challenging City as New York- and of how the fun and fascination stop once the party stops going, and reality sets in.

"Year of Grace" is a wonderful, feminist story about the meek wife of a PhD candidate who reluctantly follows her narcissistic husband to Europe, out of fear of never venturing outside her family circle- only to find herself falling in love in with French culture, and deciding to leave her ignorant and insufferable husband behind as she grows as an assured and forthright woman who does not need a man to take care of her.

"My Coney Island Uncle" is the story of a boy from Upstate who visits his bachelor uncle in Brooklyn, falls in love with his lifestyle, and is introduced into a world of eccentrics and bachelors that he's never met before while living Upstate. The story "A Story for Teddy" is about love lost- a GI who falls for the meek and innocent Teddy. They go to French restaurants, watch Billie Holliday perform, and attempt to have sex; but because Teddy is afraid of her overbearing mother, she tries to keep a distance from the narrator, until their lust finally gives in where Teddy's mother discovers the narrator sucking Teddy's breasts and kicks him out. The narrator writes about this disastrous experience as a short-story, and a tribute to the girl he lost.

Melancholy, straightforward- with dry patches of humor, this is a short story collection for anyone looking for traces of loneliness in language, loneliness in love.

[Kate]

As others have written, the title story and the last two are great (especially the title story, which is wonderful). The rest are pretty bad. I'm guessing these were written for publication in magazines, and the author was compensated? They made me think back to how bad the vast majority of Fitzgerald's short stories are.

[Rosalind Reisner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned about the San Gennaro street festival in Little Italy NY every Sept from a story in this book and went to it with college friends a year or two later.

[Rambling Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Eileen]

A Hopwood winner! Good for him.

I read the first story in this book (to sum up: good, if midcentury) before my antipathy to short stories reared its head. Back on the shelf for now.

[History Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

How could you go wrong reading a book with such a great title? First, by opening the book. These short stories from the fifties and sixties never left those decades. I might even have liked them back then—or at least thought they were hip, or something. Now they're just dreary accounts of dreary people.

[Maggie Eisenberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing, great characters in challenging situations, one enthralling story after another. Probably the best short stories I've read since college.

[Eleanor]

Full review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2023...

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uomini, storie e letteratura d’altri tempi per una raccolta di racconti mediamente buona. Alcuni episodi non mi hanno detto molto, altri invece come Uno sguardo allo specchio e L’uomo nel capanno degli attrezzi sono delle piccole perle.

[g026r · Rating 2 out of 5]

Swados is not an untalented writer — his voice flows easily and isn't marred by too many missteps — though he's more than a little mid-century in tone and tenor. His biggest problems come in the stories themselves, which run the gamut of narrative clichés (naive small-town boy moves to the city to pursue his dream, gets taken in by smooth operators, and ends up committing suicide to escape!), chicken soup-esque glurge ("A Handful of Ball-Points, a Heart Full of Love"), and well-meaning but heavy-handed social critiques.

The best story in the volume is certainly the title novella, which raises a question: it's unarguably best to start out a collection of stories with the one with the best opening lines, which unarguably belongs to "Nights...". But, at the same time, where is the proper place to put the best story? Swados' editor chose the start of the volume, which lead to a decline in interest as I continued. Without something as magically alive and real as the opening story, it eventually felt like a chore to push through the clichés and heavy-handedness to reach the end.

I'd gladly own a reprint of just the title story, and perhaps also the last two [My Coney Island Uncle, and Tree of Life], but the entire collection can't begin to live up to its high standards.

[Bob Barnshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. The stories varied in length and setting. Protagonists were always male, but they varied in age. Most were timed to be post WW2. Swados likes to leave the door open, as such these stories are lifelike as they occur but time clearly continues its march. Sure, he is somewhat sentimental, his arcs become predictable, and darkness, melancholy, and time are constantly applied. The stories are good, though, and not excessively conventional. I was able to identify many characters and remember / distinguish most of the stories…weeks after my reading. Boyhood memories, lost loves, distant friends, the brutal passage of time…..and other humanist perspectives come out in this book. At the end, I did want more, but not of a specific character or story. I just wanted more Swados. Which, I believe, is good indication of a book well written and a read much enjoyed.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harvey Swados could restore your faith in people for an evening, and then you'd wake up the next day and feel that might have been overstating things but completely intend to invite him over again sometime. The background feel is mid-century, maybe John Cheeverish or some of Philip Roth. Most appealing is the title story, a straightforward first-person reminiscence of a pretty time both had and lost; the more fictiony attempts that follow are mixed. His stories show a deep concern for a sort of ethical decency that seems rare now -- squaring up advantageous accidents, clearing the smallest emotional debts. He's more sensitive populist than artful writer, but his sincere interest in human life earns sympathy for the rougher spots.

[veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book the summer I was living in New York and it met up with me at just the right time. Not sure how I'd feel about it now, but I have fond memories of its romantic yet realistic portrait of life in New York at mid-century.

[Jennie Fields · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic voice. An author new to me though he died in the 70's. Extraordinary short stories.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, bittersweet short stories, and I never like short stories.

[Ayreon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5