Might as well get the ball rolling

"Handy to New York City, Boston, Montreal, and even Toronto - but there's no there there."

That's the usual indictment. Anyone care to take a crack at refuting it? We could start with the fact that Henry James was born in Albany. (His Daisy Miller was about innocents abroad, but don't forget that she was from Schenectady.)
James Fenimore Cooper was from upstate, too. Herman Melville lived over in Troy.

That's a start.

And a couple of more contemporary touchstones:
Richard Russo's Mohawk and Empire Falls.
William Kennedy's Ironweed.
His local reportage, O Albany!.

And a 'nature' fave of mine, A Natural History of the Albany Pine Bush

Oh, and Edmund Wilson retired to a family place up in Talcottville, and he literally wrote the book on Upstate.

And apparently his neighbors were less than thrilled with the portraits that made their way into Memoirs of Hecate County.

Kurt Vonnegut started out here as a PR writer for General Electric, which he later immortalized as the "Ilium Works".

A recent CNN article highlighted Edna St. Vincent Millay's ties to Upstate:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/09/22/literary.trip.ap/index.html

Hello, upstate New Yorkers!
Like Daisy Miller, I am from Schenectady, and still live very close to it - the next town over in fact, toward Albany.
Another Schenectadian - a real one, not a fictional one - is John Sayles, film director and writer ("Return of the Secaucus Seven," "Matewan," not to mention screenwriter for "Alligator," one of the great bad movies). Before movies, he published several books of short stories and novels (my favorite Sayles stories are "I-80, Nebraska" and the title story of The Anarchist's Convention). Wow - it's been a long time since I conjured up those titles!

My favorite fellow Schenectady native is AsYouKnow_Bob, my husband.

Oh, in case you're interested, the county library in Schenectady is having their semi-annual book sale this Saturday, September 30, from 9 to 4. Bob and I will both be volunteering at different times, and I'm sure several bags of books will follow us home, as usual. As if we really need to buy any more books.

Maggie

Hi MaggieO!
I love library sales, and when I go I always leave loaded with bags of books.
Unfortunately I am too far from Schenectady, otherwise I would drop in.
The last library sale I went to was at Garrison, and I had a great time, even though I was quite annoyed because there were a lot of bookdealers, who literally jumped on the booktables (figure of speech, but I am sure it conveys the idea), grabbed books, put them in big plastic containers and covered them, to be looked through later so that they could decide what to buy and what to dump back on the tables, thus preventing people like most of us Librarythingers to buy books we might enjoy at an affordable price.
I did complain with the organizers, not so much because there were bookdealers at the sale (in fact, they are a great support to the library with all the money they spend), but because they were awfully rude.
Sorry for my rambling thoughts, but I know you understand.
:-))

Mark Twain lived and wrote in Elmira (about an hour to the east of me). While spending time there, he wrote A Tramp Abroad , Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

That's right - I forgot about Mark Twain's home in Elmira. Good addition! There are so many upstate New Yorker writers, now and in the past.
Another NY humorist is Daniel Pinkwater, from down the Hudson somewhere near Poughkeepsie, I think (or up the Hudson, depending on where you are).

Chamomile - you probably have seen Bob at the APL sale on Thursdays, as he is there almost every week, too. And sometimes I stop in if I'm in Albany. Have you visited the little book shop at the Guilderland Public Library?

aluvalibri - I know exactly what you mean about the dealers, and your description is perfectly accurate. I've seen dealers practically knock over old women and little children in their zeal. And you're right, they do of course give valuable support to libraries, but jeez!
Most book sale patrons, I've found, are pleasant and polite and restrain themselves from snatching a book from your hands if you got to it first. When this happens, the often unspoken assessment between you about which one needs the book more is always interesting and reveals a lot about civilized behavior.) For me, it's nearly always a pleasure to be around "book people." This is especially true of children who are excited about books.

Maggie

I've never been to the Guilderland library - my usual haunts are Albany and the Hudson and Dove used book store, and before it closed, the Lark St. bookshop. The Schenectady library is where I always used to go to write book reports when I was a kid. :)

I really like Dove & Hudson - it's a very comfortable and intelligent shop. The Lark St. bookshop was good, too; did you know it was preceded (in the Harmanus Bleecker Center a few blocks away) by the Bryn Mawr Book Shop? Now that was a fun store. It was the kind of store that you could wander in, with tall book stacks and books piled everywhere. It inhabited several rooms, and always had something interesting. Alas, the used bookstores of yesteryear. . . .
The Schenectady library was also a place for book reports when I was younger, and I remember spending Saturday afternoons there exploring everything.
I recommend the Guilderland Library, which is not only a very good suburban library, but also has a pretty good "book nook" shop.
Maggie

Are there any upstate NY librarians in this group? I just joined up.

I am stuck in godforsaken Oklahoma working on my masters degree which I will finish this December.

I have GOT to get my family out of here and want to move back up North (I grew up in St. Paul, MN.)

I have a couple of questions regarding employment in your beautiful state. Thanks!

Another author to add to the Albany list -- Richard Stevenson, with his gay detective hero Donald Strachey. "Third Man Out" in the series recently was made into a TV movie starring Chad Allen. Lots of references to Albany and its charmingly corrupt politics (charming into retrospect, let's say -- not necessarily to those who lost out to the Machine).
I enjoyed hearing about the Lark Street area, my old home when I started in journalism in the late 60s at the old Knickerbocker News and the Albany bureau of AP. Now a transplant in Florida, but I enjoy brief visits to Lark Street every 2-3 years. Sorry to hear the Lark St. Bookshop is defunct.

I hadn't known about Richard Stevenson, beachcomberT - thanks! I'll have to add him to my always much-too-long list of writers to look for. Have you read William Kennedy's books about Albany?
(novels Legs & Ironweed come to mind, and his nonfiction O, Albany, too). You might enjoy them. I barely remember the Knickerbocker News now; I think it was an afternoon paper? I expect the Albany area was a good place to start out in journalism, particularly if you are interested in politics.

It's really neat to read these posts since I've been out of Albany for some years but was raised there.

I happily helped close the Harmanus Bleeker Library about 12 yrs ago. The director told us to take what we wanted! I boxed up the classics section -just amazing.

I used to haunt the basement of a book shop up in Lake George during vacations, but the name escapes me. Reading in a basement in Lake George definitely describes my version of teen angst.

Glad to be part of this group now that I'm in western NY state -lots of poets in the area, they once included Ruth Stone & Hayden Carruth at SUNY Binghamton.

Chamomile - the 'group zeitgeist' looks ok to me now, you might need to refresh your browser?

Now that I look at the Group Z -

a) it's pretty unlikely that The Pit is our top shared book. (Nobody knows that book.)

b) it shows the 'most recent additions' by group members? That could be embarrassing - me, I'm getting down to the stuff that's been relegated to boxes in the attic. (Nobody look when I get to the juvenalia....)

And jumping back to the Upstate writers list; this link for Gregory Orr came in my mail today.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/218

a poem: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19240

I would like to point out another well known book that
takes place mostly in Upstate. That isGhost Story by Peter Straub which takes place around Binghamton. Does anyone know if he is or has lived the Upstate area? His style reminds me of Stephen King's who certainly write writes about his home area.

I don't think anyone has mentioned the late Frederick Busch. He taught at Colgate, and lived in the area (at least, in Clayville and Sherburne). Several of his books take place upstate.
I've already forgotten who it was that mentioned Russo, but I wanted to say that I think that Empire Falls actually takes place in Maine. Correct me if I'm wrong.
In re Russo: I finally got around to seeing Nobody's Fool, the movie about a year ago. I loved the snow! Real upstate small town look.
When I was a kid, I loved books by Walter Edmonds--anybody still own Drums along the Mohawk? Yep, I see they do!
Jessie

On Russo and Empire Falls, for some reason I'd also been under the impression it took place in upstate NY, but in fact, as Sackler notes (#21), it is a Maine book. Though I suppose the similarities of a rust-belt economy are what led us to that conclusion...

In nonfiction, Janet Fitchen's Poverty in Rural America: A Case Study is a real classic in the study of rural poverty. She focused on a community at the northern end of the Appalachians, in the Southern Tier of upstate.

Then there's The Book of Mormon, based on tablets unearthed by Joseph Smith in Palmyra (30 minutes from Rochester). Western NY was a real hotbed of religious revival and creation in the early 1800s, coming to be known as "the burnt over district" because it was so heavily evangelized (Wikipedia has a good article on it).

In American lit, John Gardner, author of Grendel, etc. was born in Batavia. His untimely death in 1982 occured just south of here (the Binghamton area) in Susquehanna, PA.

Mystery writer Miriam Grace Monfredo lives in Pittsford and writes the "Seneca Falls" mysteries.

And I read recently that Tamora Pierce has moved to the Syracuse area.

Children's author Bruce Coville is also based in Syracuse.

Hey, don't forget Greg Maguire, who wrote Wicked and grew up right here in Albany.

As for the job market, yes, it's pretty tight here since we have the library school, but there are also many many libraries in the area.

I forgot about Barbara Block who does the "Robin Light" mysteries based in Syracuse. She also has a light mystery series under the name of Isis Crawford.

L. Frank Baum was born in Chittenango, NY which is in the heart of the Central-Leatherstocking region of New York State. Every spring Chittenango has an Oz fest, complete with a parade that includes Munchkins, actual surviving cast members from the film. Since the 1970's the main street through the village has been painted yellow and there are at least a half a dozen Oz-inflected businesses. The village's Baum museum contains first edition copies of all 14 of the original Oz books.

I have recently moved to Poughkeepsie but just now I am in Florida for the winter. Since moving from Brooklyn, I miss the easy access to the Strand, Labyrinth books and some of the other used book stores. Poughkeepsie doesn't have much of a library but stuff is available thru interlibrary loan. I will be back there in May, and hope to find another retired bibliophile among you upstate new yorkers who would like to hang out and go on browsing trips to Manhattan.

#28> almigwin, I am not retired but I would join you!
I live about one hour from Pkeepsie, going south, and there are at least a couple of excellent used bookstores near me (plus the sale, twice a year, at the Desmond Fish Library in Garrison and in Tarrytown: events definitely NOT to miss).
Let me know if you are interested.

Paola :-))

Dear almigwin and aluvalibri,

I would love to join you both on either a book sojourn north or to nyc!

almigwin, I see you are also a member of Virago Modern Classics! That's great!

(Even though I live near NYC, I'm an upstate New Yorker in my heart having lived in the Adirondacks and in Saratoga Springs!)

you are ALWAYS welcome, bleuroses, you know that!! :-))))

Paola - please make sure you tell us when those book sales come around.

(Sounds like this group is drifting toward an impromptu 'meet-up'....)

I will certainly do that, Bob!
And you let us know ehen something interesting happens in your part of the State. Who knows, we might even end up renting a minivan!!!!
Oh, and by the way, the expedition to the "Bruised Apple" and Field Library Bookstore in Peekskill went QUITE well (ask bleuroses).

Impromptu 'meet-up'...sounds cool!!!

:-))

And you let us know when something interesting happens in your part of the State.

...don't hold your breath.

Actually, SUNY-Albany has a good series of visiting writers.

The biggest booksale in the Capital District is the Schenectady Library Sale, also twice a year (May, and late Sept.)

One would need to be completely obsessed with books to travel any distance for either, though....

(On the other hand, a nice book sale on the way to NYC sounds relatively plausible.)

Yep, the ones I mentioned are actually pretty good. The only thing I positively cannot stand are the book dealers, who literally "plunge" on the tables and get armfuls of books, which they put in big bins and cover until they can go through them at ease and keep what they are interested in (all this at the Desmond Fish Library in Garrison, and on the first night, which is open to the 'Friends of the Library' only). At the Tarrytown sale there still are annoying book dealers, who still push and shove and try to prevent people from getting close to the tables, but at least not as much as in Garrison.
Still, both places are well worth the trip (unless things change in the future, that is).

Thanks Paola for your response. Yes of course i would be interested if the garrison and tarrytown sales are between may and december when I will be back up north. Also, Pkpsi has a big sale once(?) a year and it was fun although there was very little i didn't already have, my son and granddaughter got some stuff. Can I get a train to Garrison or Tarrytown? I'm not a big fan of driving any distances. i didn't drive in nyc for 20 years. I can do it, but I don't like to if it can be avoided.

almigwin! I just responded to your post in the Cookbooks section. You will smile when you read it!! I had not realized you were the same person I responded to here. Yes, there is a train from Pkeeksie to Garrison and also to Tarrytown. The only thing is that to go to Tarrytown you should change at Croton Harmon. If you decide to come to the sales, I could pick you up at Peekskill and then we could proceed to Tarrytown. But we can talk about it later.
Oh, and by the way, please let us know when the big sale at Pkeepsie comes up, will you? Thanks!

Paola :-))

And don't forget the wonderful "Country Matters" by Michael Korda, Editor in Chief of Simon & Schuster. It's a memoir of his move from the city to Pleasant Valley in the Poughkeepsie area. He wrote lots of other great stuff, too, about living in Dutchess County.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy is about her husband Almanzo's childhood in Malone.

i'd like to blow my own horn and ask you to check out a book i wrote in 2005 called: Another Time; Another World (growing up in the Adirondacks in the mid-20th century). Of the 66 articles in it, most of them had been published in the Adirondack Journal or Glens Falls Post-Star in the 1980s. you can find it at amazon.com or www.andyray.net

Warren County definitely is "upstate New York." If I and/or others our way, we would be annexed by Vermont. The annexation would start at Saratoga Springs and go to the border to the north, to the great lakes to the west.