"Brooklyn is a mythic place. Gowanus is its Nile," begins Vincent Coppola (Uneasy Warriors) in this humorous yet often wrenching recollection of his youth. Gowanus Crossing is not just a memoir of Coppola's childhood but also a history of the Gowanus Canal and Brooklyn, and by extrapolation, of New York City.
With a gimlet-eyed view, the former Newsweek reporter, now in his 70s, traces the changes wrought by various immigrant communities--especially his own Italian American community--as well as by the Vietnam War and the AIDS crisis. Most notably, he captures the elastic days of childhood: "Waiting defined life in those days.... Vast deserts of time, never to be reclaimed." This was a luxury and a curse, as when he awaited the grade on a story he'd polished so many times: "I choke up when I read it." Sister Mary Malachy accused him of plagiarism and knocked him against the blackboard. Coppola was 13; he would not write another story until he was 28. Coppola describes his first kiss, getting arrested for murder (innocent Coppola was eventually released), and watching his brother Thomas die of AIDS.
Not only does Coppola describe the mythic quality of the Gowanus Canal of his boyhood, but he paints a mythos for all readers. The Canal, once a salt marsh, nurtured "succulent oysters," exported by the Dutch; Frank Sinatra bought his sfogliatella at Cioffi's on Union Street; George Washington sheltered in the Old Stone House on Third Street with the retreating Continental Army. Sister Mary may have underestimated Coppola's gifts, but readers will not. He has captured a bygone era in Brooklyn for posterity. --Jennifer M. Brown