Book Review: Greenwich Village Reader

WASHINGTON, July 12 (UPI) -- So many amazing writers from all over the world found themselves passing through the area of New York City known as Greenwich Village that one has imagine that there is something magical about the place itself.

O. Henry, Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Willa Cather, Allen Ginsberg, and a host of other writers lived for a time within the area that runs between Avenue C, and Bleeker Street.

Given the fact that many of these authors were the leading writers of their generation one would expect that any compilation of their works would be fascinating and rich. So it comes as a blow to read June Skinner Sawyers' book, "The Greenwich Village Reader," (Cooper Square Press, pp. 727, $35.00) since she has managed to compile some of the most insignificant and boring works of each of the towering literary figures into a dreadful tome.

Skinner selected items from the each of the writers that reference Greenwich Village, or that were written while the writers lived there. The problem with this approach is that many of the works are simply not reflective of the amazing talent these individual writers had. The mere common factual bond of a reference to the Village is simply not enough to generate any meaningful interest in these unfortunate stories, poems and essays.

Instead, "The Greenwich Village Reader" contains a lot of thematically repetitive works. The tale of the starving dedicated artist who is not appreciated is reflected throughout many of the essays and short stories to the point that it becomes dull.

This story is often repeated in many works from the opera "La Boheme" to the musical "Rent." It is interesting enough until it is told so many times in one volume that it actually begins to ring hollow (an exception to this being Willa Cather's delightful story "Coming, Aphrodite!" which is always fun even if it is perhaps the most predictable work in her oeuvre).

Many of the pieces are simply nineteenth century name-dropping efforts on the part of essayist who wrote far better works of great significance. There are far too many short recollections by authors who claim to have spotted one another at Village watering holes and dining establishments.

Like much of the fiction in this book, the essays repeat the theme of artistic persecution and suffering until the reader almost forgets or stops caring that many great writers and artists really were not appreciated in their times.

The book is not entirely uninteresting. Before each piece, Sawyer has added a brief paragraph giving some vague biographical facts about each artist, which is somewhat interesting. Here Sawyer had a great opportunity to add some fascinating and precise details about these writers, but she elected instead to write tiny sound-bite-like blurbs that provide far less information than they might. For example, American poet John Reed died in Moscow and is buried behind the wall of the Kremlin. Now that is interesting and makes the reader want to know more about why this writer became a communist. A simple paragraph or two more would have done it, but, irritatingly, Sawyer simply stops after conveying this information.

As a practical matter, it seems that "The Greenwich Village Reader" would be of interest to a small group of people in the first place.

Given its failings, it would seem to of real interest to even fewer. Unfortunately, this overly ambitious book will leave you asking: "Why did she bother?"