Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx / Edition 1

by Michael Pearson

Overview

A moving memoir, Dreaming of Columbus illuminates place as a force that shapes lives. With recollection and reportage, Michael Pearson re-creates the Bronx of the 1950s and 1960s, an Irish Catholic culture filled with light and shadows. Pearson renders time and place vividly through his lyrical narrative voice and his generous spirit toward his characters. The driving force behind Pearson's story is its people-an enigmatic father, a steadfast mother, an eccentric and influential writing teacher, the boys and girls who shared his neighborhood, the high school girl who shared his vision and his life-and the books that made escape and return seem possible. Few writers go home again as successfully as Michael Pearson. When he literally and imaginatively revisits the all-but-unrecognizable Bronx of his youth, longing for its intense life, he concedes it was "close to paradise." We understand perfectly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815605614
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1999
Series:	New York City
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Michael Pearson teaches creative writing and American literature at Old Dominion University. He is the author of numerous books, including Innocents Abroad Too, Shohola Falls, and Imagined Places: Journeys into Literary America. His essays and stories appear in such publications as the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, the New York Times, and the Southern Literary Journal.

Editorial Reviews

[A] poignant and insightful account.

New York Times

Pearson's stories . . . have about them not only the cherished patina of memory but also the wry recollection that the things we remember aren't always the way things were.
. . . His language is sure and supple.

Booklist

A memoir of Bronx in the 1950s and 1960s and the Irish Catholic culture that Pearson characterizes as both safe and claustrophobic. He juxtaposes tales of adolescent escapades with the grim discipline of parochial schools. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

A romantic but uneven memoir of growing up Irish Catholic in the Bronx, N.Y., during the 1950s and '60s. Revisiting his childhood, Pearson (English/Old Dominion Univ.; A Place That's Known, 1994), born in 1950, offers a tour of his Bronx neighborhood, including the playgrounds, ball fields, candy stores, schools, and street corners that were his hangouts. He remembers the games of football, baseball, and stickball, as well as both the discipline and good will of the Catholic nuns and brothers who taught him, exemplifying a tough love that sometimes spilled over into sadism. He also introduces his family: a protective and loving mother, a father who (along with other fathers in the neighborhood) stopped in at the local bar every night and arrived home not only drunk, but belligerent and punitive. A long, poignant chapter, full of fantasy, explores the man his father might have been if not for WWII and missed opportunities. Here are reflections on the boys in the 'hood and their culture, but the images are often blurred around the edges: an initial essay, for instance, describing an expedition to Manhattan to view a pornographic movie, has great potential for broad humor or at least irony yet is curiously flat. The boys move through McCarthyism, President Kennedy's assassination, burgeoning sexuality, and, as they near 18, the threat of being drafted for Vietnam. Pearson escaped the draft and went on to a Catholic college, later meeting his wife and becoming a teacher and a writer. As a child, Pearson thought that, as much as he also wanted to escape, the Bronx was "as close to paradise as anyone could expect to come"; as an adult, he was disheartened by the poverty and decay hefound on return visits. A limp coda, describing a current community-based rescue operation, tries to end the memoir on an upbeat note. A mix of history and memory that doesn't quite capture either the dynamism or the distinctiveness of the Bronx.

Kirkus Reviews

Pearson's stories . . . have about them not only the cherished patina of memory but also the wry recollection that the things we remember aren't always the way things were.
. . . His language is sure and supple.

--Booklist

[A] poignant and insightful account.--New York Times

From the Publisher

Pearson's stories . . . have about them not only the cherished patina of memory but also the wry recollection that the things we remember aren't always the way things were. . . . His language is sure and supple.

Booklist