The Boys of Bensonhurst: Stories

by Salvatore La Puma

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820308919
• ISBN13: 9780820308913
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Dear, dirty Brooklyn

Tales of working-class Brooklyn in the years of the Great Depression, WW II, and the decade thereafter. Set in what was then an enclave mainly of Italian-Americans and Jews. Narrated in a gritty and literate style appropriate to its subject, the stories are, of course, tragic (you can hear Mascagni in every story). For an updated, feminist account, set in the 1960s, read CROSSING OCEAN PARKWAY (far more elegant in style and affectionate in tone, but here the author is a professor of English literature). So far, the masterwriter of the Italian-American experience--first and second generations thereof--remains, to my mind, Mario Puzo; read his minor masterpiece THE FORTUNATE PILGRIM (portrayed by Sophia Loren in the TV movie). As a stylist, Puzo is elegant, suave, succinct; his great master, to my mind, is Manzoni. Puma, to my mind, comes from the tradition of Verga. It is good to hear, finally, the New-World voices of the heirs of one of the world's great literary traditions. A must-read for students of New York realism (see also Malamud, Crane, Henry Miller, Selby, Paule Marshall, Henry Roth, etc., etc.). With La Puma we have the children and grandchildren of immigrants frolicking in the devil's playground, aka Brooklyn.