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A Coney Island Reader – Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion - Columbia Scholarship Online
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A Coney Island Reader: Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion

Louis Parascandola and John Parascandola

Abstract

This anthology focuses on the unique history and experience of Coney Island, a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape. It features a gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers. These include Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, José Martí, Maxim Gorky, Federico García Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe. Moody, mystical and enchanting, Coney Island has thrilled newcomers and soothed native New Yorkers for decades. As complex as the city of which it is a part, it is famous for it ... More

Keywords: urban decay, Coney Island, New York City, portraits, fantasy entertainment, resort

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2014 Print ISBN-13: 9780231165730
Published to Columbia Scholarship Online: November 2015 DOI:10.7312/columbia/9780231165730.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

Louis Parascandola, author
Long Island University

John Parascandola, editor

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Contents

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Front Matter

Title Pages

Title Pages

Title Pages

Title Pages

Illustrations

Foreword

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Text

Selected Chronology of Coney Island

Introduction

The Beginnings through 1896

[Clam-Bake at Coney Island]

Walt Whitman

Coney Island

Charles Dawson Shanly

To Coney Island

William Henry Bishop

Coney Island

José Martí Translated by Esther Allen

Coney Island’s Failing Days

Stephen Crane

Coney Island

Julian Ralph

The Era of the Three Great Amusement Parks 1897–1911

Marvelous Coney Island

Guy Wetmore Carryl

Human need of Coney Island

Richard Le Gallienne

Boredom

Maxim Gorky

The Master Showman of Coney Island

Peter Lyon

Amusing the Million

Frederic Thompson

The Way of the Girl

Belle Lindner Israels

Why is Coney?

Reginald Wright Kauffman

The Coney Island Excursion

Kathy Peiss

Samantha at Coney Island and a Thousand Other Islands

Marietta Holley

Coney Island

Sara Teasdale

The Greater Coney

O. Henry

Dreamland

Kevin Baker

In Dreams begin Responsibilities

Delmore Schwartz

Sunday

Robert Olen Butler

Ruins Help Draw 350,000 to Coney

The Nickel Empire

The Tingling, Tangling Tango as ’Tis Tripped at Coney Isle

Djuna Barnes

New Cosmopolis

James Huneker

Human Nature with the Brakes off–or

Edward F. Tilyou

Coney

Giuseppe Cautela

Coney Island

E. E. Cummings

Into the Night Life

Henry Miller

Now and Then

Joseph Heller

The Electric Michelangelo

Sarah Hall

Attachment to Letter to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia

Robert Moses

To Heaven by Subway

Coney

Amram Ducovny

Stranger at Coney Island

Kenneth Fearing

The years of Decline and the Hope of Rebirth 1949 to the Present

A Coney Island of the Mind

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Warriors

Sol Yurick

Coney Island in November

Josephine W. Johnson

My Son the Murderer

Bernard Malamud

Mayor Blasts Ta Brass on Coney Island Debacle

George Todd

Kwan’s Coney Island

Edward Hoagland

Coney Island 1969

Edwin Torres

Coney Island

Colson Whitehead

A Coney Island of the Mind

Katie Roiphe

City Planning Begins Public Review on Rezoning of Coney Island

New York City Department of City Planning

Comments on the Revised Draft Scope of analysis for Coney Island Rezoning Project

Municipal Art Society

Confessions of a Coney Island Sideshow Performer

Donald Thomas

A Coney Island of the Mind

Maureen F. McHugh

End Matter

Appendix Coney Island in Movies and Music

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