Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take On the Garden State [Paperback]

Irina Reyn (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2007

Mobsters. Big hair. The smelly Turnpike. The poor cousin of its glittering neighbor Manhattan. Could that really be all there is to New Jersey? In Living on the Edge of the World, the best and brightest young writers from the much maligned state answer back with edgy, irreverent pieces of nonfiction paying tribute to New Jersey's unique place in the cultural consciousness.

Like a drive along the Garden State Parkway, their stories travel to just about every corner of the state, from Princeton and Hillside to Camden and Hoboken. In "Straight Outta Garwood," Tom Perrotta writes of the near inescapability of returning to his home state again and again in his novels; in "Exit 15W," Joshua Braff tells how all roads led back to the Jersey Girl he'd fallen for as a seventh-grader; Kathleen DeMarco takes a nostalgic look at her grandfather's cranberry bog in "The Family Farm"; Jonathan Ames recounts a failed attempt to consummate his flirtation with a boardwalk beauty in "Rose of the Jersey Shore"; and Frederick Reiken offers an elegy to a high-rise in Fort Lee that opens his eyes to a new, dangerous world.

A celebration of all that's weird and wonderful about the Garden State -- including Bruce Springsteen, the Nets, the Jersey Devil, the films of Kevin Smith, and Great Adventure -- Living on the Edge of the World will have New Jerseyans everywhere ready to stand and be counted.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This collection proves that you can go home again, because when you are from New Jersey, you never really leave."

-- Mark Sceurman, Weird N.J.

"This funny, wistful, and appealingly oddball book covers more ground in New Jersey than the Turnpike. It's a fitting tribute to my beloved -- and deeply misunderstood -- home state."

-- Jancee Dunn, author of But Enough About Me...

About the Author

Irina Reyn is a fiction and nonfiction writer who divides her time between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in anthologies and publications such as The Forward, San Francisco Chronicle, The Moscow Times, Nextbook and Post Road. Born in Moscow, Irina was raised in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (June 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743291603
• ISBN-13: 978-0743291606
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,075,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Travel > United States > States > New Jersey

More About the Author

From the June 15, 2010 broadcast of public radio's Writer's Almanac as read by Garrison Keillor: It's the birthday of folksinger and writer Christian Bauman, born in Easton, Pennsylvania (1970). He's the author of three widely praised novels, all published within the past decade: The Ice Beneath You (2002), Voodoo Lounge (2005), and In Hoboken (2008).

Though his mom was a doctor and his stepdad a philosophy professor, the boy didn't do well at academics. He barely graduated from high school and never went to college. He became a teenage father and worked as a cook, a clerk, a copy writer, and in all sorts of manual labor jobs. He painted houses, he spent a Philadelphia winter perched on scaffolding working on windows of a tall old school building, and he later watered plants at a corporate office, where he'd time his entry into the executive dining room so that he could help himself to the end of the lunch buffet.

He was 21, impoverished, in debt, without health insurance, and his young daughter needed an operation he couldn't afford. He began to pay attention to Army recruitment commercials. He said he joined the Army "for the same reason most people join the Army." He said, "I was young and poor. I had a child to support and no real job prospects. I wanted to escape. But what clinched it was when I found out the Army would pay for the operation my daughter needed."

He trained at Fort Eustis, in Virginia, where he was the only newly enlisted guy getting The New Yorker magazine. When he was shipped off to Somalia in 1992, he brought his typewriter along.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars who says you can't go back, November 18, 2007

By 

Mombo "Mombo" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take On the Garden State (Paperback)

This book is a series of short stories and most, if not all; will have autobiographical implications for those born and raised in the Garden State. Since each story has a different author, you have the experience of varying styles and perspectives.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars just okay, December 17, 2007

By 

Joyce Ann Jacobs "Avid reader" (Jersey Girl) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take On the Garden State (Paperback)

I had heard this authors on the radio and was looking forward to reading the collection but I was somewhat disappointed in the quality of the essays.