Notes From The Village: August
Oh, hello!
August is Read-a-Romance Month! Naturally, in our case, we're interpreting "romance" rather loosely.
Because some of our favorite love stories aren't simply about two people falling hopelessly into one another's arms. They're about writers falling hopelessly for New York City. A favorite bar. 14th Street at sunset. A skating rink. Hot dogs at Howard Johnson's. And yes, occasionally, spectacularly ill-suited literary types making questionable decisions together in Greenwich Village. Now that’s our kind of romance.
So consider this month's Notes from the Village our literary love letter to New York. 💌 To the writers who loved it, the stories it inspired, and the strange little places that keep us falling for it all over again.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten …
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
— EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
This Month in the Village…
✨ For those of you who keep time by books instead of clocks:
On Our Nightstands…
💔 Eric's Epic Guide to Romance
This month, Eric has been exploring the gloriously melodramatic world of romance comics from the 1940s–70s: a time when falling in love apparently required exquisite hair, several catastrophic misunderstandings, and at least one woman weeping dramatically into her hands.
While we can't promise relationship advice, we can promise gripping storylines.
LIT Lore
🌭 A Village Meet-Cute
Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson's romance began, as all great romances do, with Allen Ginsberg calling a 21-year-old Johnson and asking her to feed his broke friend.
They met at the Howard Johnson's at Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue, where she bought Kerouac two hot dogs. He later called what followed "perhaps the best love affair I ever had."
Move over, When Harry Met Sally.
💌 Writers in (and out of) Love with New York
For generations, writers have been inspired by their experiences in New York, and some of them left us the books to prove it:
• Hart Crane — The Bridge 🌉
Crane transformed the Brooklyn Bridge into something almost mythic: a symbol of modern America, possibility, history, and the dizzying city rising around him.
• Willa Cather — Coming, Aphrodite! 🎨
Artists, ambition, desire, and bohemian Greenwich Village collide in Cather's story of two neighbors whose attraction competes with their determination to become something more.
• Federico García Lorca — Poet in New York 🌃
Not exactly a valentine. Lorca's encounter with New York produced something darker and stranger: a surreal portrait of a city that fascinated, overwhelmed, and disturbed him.
• Jack Kerouac — Lonesome Traveler 🧳
Who describes that feeling when you return to the city perfectly: “I settled down to […] long walks around beloved old Manhattan a half hour subway ride away. I roamed the streets, the bridges, Times Square, cafeterias, the waterfront, I looked up all my poet beatnik friends and roamed with them, I had love affairs with girls in the Village, I did everything with that great mad joy you get when you return to New York City.”
We know the feeling.
Upcoming Tours
The Village has been the setting for great novels, terrible dates, passionate affairs, artistic revolutions, and more than a few nights best left to literary history.
• 🍻 Literary Pub Crawl
Walk the streets of Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Millay, Baldwin, and more. Hear their stories where they lived, wrote, loved, argued, and occasionally drank.
• ✒️ Greenwich Village Writers Walk
A walking tour—fewer spirits (well, of the alcoholic sort). Ideal for those who prefer their wit neat.
Come wander with with us!
From the Stacks…
Want more love triangles, secret affairs, and spectacularly questionable decisions? Enjoy some of our wacky literary wanderings on Substack...
• The Strange Literary History of Valentine's Day 💌 Saints, she-wolves, Chaucer, suffragettes, vinegar valentines, and a few unsettling mating rituals. Romance has always been weirder than the greeting-card aisle would have you believe.
→ Read: Do You Know the Real (Literary) History Behind Valentine's Day?
• A Reading List to Romanticize Your Life ✨ Not necessarily romance novels—just books that make the world feel a little more beautiful, curious, whimsical, or worth lingering in.
→ Explore: A Reading List to Romanticize Your Life
New York, I Love You…
🎬 And a special treat for those who read through to the end…a few romantic-ish films that feature NYC in iconic ways:
• When Harry Met Sally...
Autumn in New York, bookstores, Katz's, Central Park—and perhaps the definitive argument for falling in love with your best friend.
• Moonstruck
Brooklyn brownstones, the Met, moonlight, opera, and gloriously messy people behaving gloriously messily.
• You've Got Mail
Bookstores, the Upper West Side, Riverside Park, and New York at its most unapologetically cozy.
• Splash
Who doesn’t love a mermaid who names herself after Madison Avenue? Iconic.
• Fatal Attraction
Manhattan apartments, illicit affairs, terrible decisions, and a compelling reminder that perhaps some romances are better left unread.
• Rosemary's Baby
Marriage, Manhattan real estate, meddling neighbors, and a gentle reminder to always read the fine print before moving into your dream apartment.
• Ghostbusters
‘Nuff said. ❓📞🚫👻❤️🍕🧪
