« Community Groups Sue City over Broadway Triangle Inside the Knitting Factory's New Digs »

September 10, 2009

Sitting Down with Prospect Park West Penner

park-slope-street-0909.jpgThe Times gets up close and personal with Prospect Park West author and Park Slope resident Amy Sohn today, talking playground politics and parenting roles. The book has garnered its fair share of attention, not only because it was snapped up by Sarah Jessica Parker who plans to turn it into the Brooklyn version of Sex in the City, but because it plays with and on so many of the stereotypes that abound about Park Slope. From The Times...

"The attractive female characters deem themselves too cool for the neighborhood (one thinks of it as “Park Slob”), while those who embrace the area are often characterized as smothering and semi-pathetic, reading self-help books like “Great Sex For Moms: Ten Steps to Nurturing Passion While Raising Kids.” Park Slope’s liberal values are also lampooned; a controversy erupts at the local food co-op over racial profiling.

Other true-to-life tidbits—like the ad for swingers posted on the Park Slope Parents message board—also make it into the book, which is sure to make it a guilty pleasure for anyone who loves, or loves to hate, the Slope. Anyone actually read the thing? Sounds like guilty-pleasure, end-of-summer reading to us.
A Park Slope Novel Seems a Little Too Real [NY Times]
Photo by Robert Catalano




Posted by Brownstoner at 10:01 AM | Comments (31)
Categories: Park Slope

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.brownstoner.com/mte/mt-tb.cgi/11355

Comments

I'm planing to read it, oh yes. Most american novels now are not so much about plot or a story really, rather than trying to depict slices of life we've all encountered and doing it in a way that is instantly recognizable, truthful, wise, and illuminating.

Posted by: infinitejester at September 10, 2009 10:08 AM

I actually thought she came off very well in the article. I have to say, I'm much more likely to read the book now. I'm sure I will find the characters slightly stereotypical, but that's what people do in popular fiction and TV, so I can't say it bothers me too much.

Posted by: Rookie at September 10, 2009 10:13 AM

she's an overrated moron. if i get banned for saying that so be it. but that's just how i feel.

*rob*

Posted by: Butterfly at September 10, 2009 10:17 AM

sounds about as inane and boring as sex and the city.

Posted by: eh at September 10, 2009 10:24 AM

Why bother reading it, when you live it? I can make fun of my own life, thank you very much.

Posted by: bupe at September 10, 2009 10:28 AM

Brownstoner's Law: any post with the words "Park Slope" and "Mom" will draw over 75 comments.

Posted by: Ditmas at September 10, 2009 10:30 AM

Rob, have you read anything of hers?

'My Old Man' was pretty funny, imo. Not deep lit, but funny nevertheless.

Posted by: denton at September 10, 2009 10:35 AM

Sounds like she has a little trouble being one of the people she characterizes. Still, plenty that someone like myself can relate to in that milieu. Though I don't live in the slope there are plenty of familiar stereotypes in Clinton Hill parents. One thing I wonder, why is it such a big deal to have a breast feeding friendly restaurant? I can't believe some people are so uptight about breast feeding.

Posted by: wasder at September 10, 2009 10:37 AM

I read it over the long weekend and thought it did a pretty good job of lampooning some of the neighborhood's collective neuroses. It's obviously no great work of literature, but I don't think anyone reads it expecting that. People who want it to be some nuanced portrayal of life in the slope ( cough, cough, Louise Crawford) will have their outrage frequency tweaked.

My favorite bit was some dialogue that between two characters (who are paraphrasing a line from that movie 'Singles') It goes something like, 'First of all, you have an act, and second of all, hating on Park Slope is your act.'

I think she got at least a few people's numbers with that one.

Posted by: firefly100 at September 10, 2009 10:41 AM

i do NOT want to see breastesses while im eating. im sorry. im not uptight either. i just think it's gross. since it's so natural.. would i be allowed to rub one out in a restaurant? that's natural too you know! i know, that's a stretch, but still.

*rob*


Posted by: Butterfly at September 10, 2009 10:45 AM

Wasder -
Anyone who is against breastfeeding in public is - either:

Gay
infertile
parent of slow child (due to formula feeding)
or
has nasty flap-jackety tits that they'd never ever show in public

Posted by: fsrg at September 10, 2009 10:46 AM

Way to live and let live, rob. Sheesh.

She comes across kind of reactionary in that article. I always took her for an airheaded "I will conquer New York and never stop telling you about it" type but I'm favorably impressed with that article, she actually seems pensive and reflective.

Posted by: infinitejester at September 10, 2009 10:49 AM

i was partially kidding. i dont care if someone breastfeeds in public. i do think it's narsty tho, but if someone wants to do it fine.

formula babies wind up being more creative later in life studies show however.


*rob*

Posted by: Butterfly at September 10, 2009 10:52 AM

I'm an ex-Sloper always in search of a fun beach book and a good laugh, so will certainly give it a read. Who wants a steady diet of Dostoevsky?

Posted by: Architerrorist at September 10, 2009 10:59 AM

they excerpted the book on gawker. i don't mind guilty pleasures, but i just can't read ones that are so poorly written that i'm cringing every other sentence. maybe it was dumbed-down for broad appeal, but it really is sad.

Posted by: i disagree at September 10, 2009 11:03 AM

Your sitting in a restaurant where (generally) you and/or others are eating pieces of dead farm animals, often along with milk products that come from a dirty cow teet, and if there is seafood, people are eating whole scavangers, shit and all....and you find a young (or youngish) women breastfeeding nasty??
Its about you......

BTW - I love all the 'nasty food' described above and more.

Posted by: fsrg at September 10, 2009 11:07 AM

i disagree - that seems kinda sexist - broads can generally read as well as men.

Posted by: fsrg at September 10, 2009 11:08 AM

well im pro-formula fsgr.

*rob*

Posted by: Butterfly at September 10, 2009 11:10 AM

I'm reading it right now. It's fun for me to see so many places from the 'nabe, but it's not the Park Slope that I inhabit at all. The main characters all are toxic, loathsome, and stereotypical. Not a single redeeming trait among them. That doesn't enrage me like it will some Slopers, but it does get a bit boring for me. The book is occasionally funny, but the writing is poor and choppy and - since they are so loathsome - I just don't care about any of the characters.

According to Property shark, less than 1/4 of all Park Slope households have children living at home.... a small minority. I admit I do find it annoying when the myth that "everyone" in this neighborhood is a yuppie parent is asserted over and over and over....

Posted by: Kris at September 10, 2009 11:21 AM

I was never breast fed... My mother told me she just wanted to be friends.

For Rob...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3-YGLnoELQ

Posted by: IMBY at September 10, 2009 11:25 AM

fsrq: cute. perhaps they can generally read as well as men, but can they specifically read as well?

Posted by: i disagree at September 10, 2009 11:30 AM

i wasn't breastfed cuz it's not cool to give newborns alcohol and drugs lol

*rob*

Posted by: Butterfly at September 10, 2009 11:41 AM

I read the excerpt you can read on Amazon. Looks horrible. Also have read her NY Mag columns--or as much as I could read w/o gagging, and some of the crap she'd write in the NY Press or whatever it was. Agree with Rob, she's way overrated, just a bad annoying writer who exaggerates everything for attention.

Also: Not everyone in Park Slope is forced to belong to the damn co-op! Just walk down the street to Union Market...

Posted by: woodys at September 10, 2009 12:51 PM

God, I hope the book flops and they will never make a series out of it. And if they do, they should film it all in Brooklyn Heights.

Seriously, SATC has been done, 30 somethings has been done, this is a really shallow well at this point.

Posted by: bupe at September 10, 2009 1:18 PM

wow i read the article about her in page six today. she's all quoted as actually calling out people in the neighborhood with her husband and calling them fat and frumpy. what a biotch. grow up lady. youre writing blows. you lucked out in life.

*rob*

Posted by: Butterfly at September 10, 2009 1:23 PM

I completely agree with Kris. I'm reading it now, and while it's fun to see so many familiar places from my daily life portrayed in the story, the satire is a bit too broad for me -- so far, at least (I'm about half way through the book), everyone comes across as overly stereotypical and fairly loathesome. I can't believe that Sohn expressed surprise in the Times article that people think she portrays the neighborhood and its inhabitants in a negative light, since she clearly went to great lengths to do exactly that.

While I understand the source of the satire, and can laugh at it along with everyone else, I'm also curious about how this comes across to people elsewhere in the country. Could you write the same book about yupster parents in Marin County or Brookline or Hyde Park? Or do we seem like complete aliens?

Posted by: Park Sloper at September 10, 2009 1:36 PM

Of course, the funny thing is that the book must have been easy to write, because it's not really fiction!

Posted by: Park Sloper at September 10, 2009 1:39 PM

I actually thought her New York Press column was amusing, (being about the same age probably helped), but those two pages excerpted in gawker really turned me off. I think the description of the subservient nanny is what really got to me.

Now, I am reading "A Fortunate Age" and trying to decide if a paragraph-by-paragraph redux of Mary McCarthy's "The Group" set in mid-nineties Williamsburg is brilliant or absurd. Still can't decide, but it's an improvement over Sohn.

Posted by: Heather at September 10, 2009 1:45 PM

Huh, Heather, sounds good.

I don't think people across the country even know what the hell Park Slope is. I tell people who have sons and daughters living here where I live, they don't recognize the name although their adult children obviously do.

The thing about New York - you live here and it feels like the only place to ever live. Then you go to like Phoenix or Dallas and they don't even think about New York, other than as some place in America.

Posted by: infinitejester at September 10, 2009 3:23 PM

Yes, infinite, but then you realize you're a New Yorker when you are in those places and can't stop complaining about all the stuff they don't have like New York.

Phoenix is almost as scary as Fresno.

Posted by: Heather at September 10, 2009 5:02 PM

Amy Sohn may live in the neighborhood, but she doesn't know the neighborhood - or has chosen not to really know it. I mean how hard is it to find the Tea Lounge. She simply wanted to design characters around out of date stereotypes because she thought it would sell books. The fact is Park Slope has plenty of yuppies and working moms.

She claims she struggles to make friends in the neighborhood -- that from a woman who tried to join a moms group under her husband's last name so no one would know who she was and then use their musings as fodder for her book.

Posted by: JaneDough at September 11, 2009 3:02 PM

Post a comment

Please be patient while your comment is published. It may take a moment.

Latest Restaurant Additions