MY OLD NEIGHBORHOOD REMEMBERED

 “Avery Corman has written a lyrical ode to another New York, a time when stickball and punchball and hanging out on stoops and drinking egg creams filled out afternoons, a city where people had an embracing sense of community. Reading this book is like gathering around a warm fire to hear tales spun by a master storyteller.” — Ken Auletta, author and New Yorker magazine writer

“This is a poignant and evocative book filled with lessons for today. It will strike a chord in you wherever you may have grown up.” —Walter Isaacson, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Steve Jobs

Like Norman Rockwell with words, New York Times bestselling author Avery Corman vividly recreates the vibrant, colorful neighborhood he grew up in — the Bronx in the 1940s and ‘50s — bringing to life a world and way of life now vanished. In My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir (Barricade Books; June 2014; $19.95), Corman, who wrote Kramer vs. Kramer and Oh, God!, conjures up the candy stores and bookmakers, egg creams and double feature movie shows, the old Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, Jackie Robinson, strolling the Grand Concourse to “walk me for a soda” with friends, and barbershops where men congregated for hours. Gas rationing kept cars off the streets, so stickball games were almost daily events. Everyone rooted for the Giants, Dodgers, and the Yankees because they were all New York home teams, and a kid of 11 or 12 was at liberty to hop on a subway and visit Manhattan by himself.

More than a telling of times past, My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a lively and memorable urban history, with 16 black and white photographs. His was the generation of home front children during World War II, who became literate courtesy of Dick and Jane, newspaper war headlines, and comic books. There was a deep connection to place, a sense of community and shared experience. Corman also discusses the factors that altered the Bronx, in a decline that was particularly rapid and vast, before the area began to rebuild.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Avery Corman is the author of nine novels including Kramer vs. Kramer, the basis for the Academy Award-winning best picture, and so successful, many assumed he was divorced. He was happily married, though his parents were not, and that story is woven into his memoir. He wrote Oh, God! (it became the hit comedy movie starring George Burns), The Bust-Out King, The Old Neighborhood, Prized Possessions, The Big Hype, and A Perfect Divorce. He has also written non-fiction for many publications, including numerous articles for the New York Times.