Queens: A Writer's Retreat
By Arnold Skemer

DECEMBER 2002

From the putrid industrial streets of long island city, the mansions of Jamaica Estates, the vacant lots near Kennedy Airport (favored by organized crime as a place to dump truncated bodies in suitcases), the nondescript ticky tack of Bellerose and Glen Oaks, the crumbling frame houses of Woodhaven, the seediness of industrial Maspeth to the exclusivity of Douglaston Manor, there’s lots of writing going on. Violating the adage that writing, like defecation, is best done in private, hundreds of joyous enthusiasts are filling pages with abstruse jottings, their eyes filled with hope, their hearts thumping with passion, their hands gyrating as the frenzy o new ideas strike them. One can only speculate about the ones unseen, who, more self-conscious, carry on their compositional activities in a studied secrecy.

Forever in the shadow of mythological Manhattan, held in contempt in the popular eye as the home of Archie Bunker, “The Nanny,” “The King of Queens,” the dear departed John Gotti, as a gross assemblage of auto wreck yards, industrial zones, seedy businesses, boring apartment blocks, endless rows of attached houses, uneducated slugs and clods with colorful accents, picking their noses, scratching their privates, skeevy Queens is not given much credence as a place where writers might be encountered. This estimation does not do the borough justice. Writers abound, engaging in their art behind the walls of tiresome apartment buildings, on buses and trains, in parks, in libraries.

On the tedious streets of New York’s neglected borough, in ordinary looking structures, are the tribe of the possessed, unseen by the media, the smart set of “the Village,” who would undoubtedly denigrate them. They do themselves wrong. Queens has a long tradition. Walt Whitman taught school in Whitestone. Jack Kerouac lived in Ozone Park, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of the vast garbage dump that was to become Flushing Meadow Park in The Great Gatsby. While largely an assemblage of bedroom communities, Queens has the most utilized public library system in the country, suggestive of a high level of literacy. All over the borough, crowds line up at check out counters, particularly on Friday evenings, withdrawing free-of-charge movie tapes for the weekend. (Included in the stats!) Some branches are fortunate to be located next to OTBs. Look at the Grand Avenue branch in Maspeth where cigar-chewing racetrack touts study THE RACING FORM with a scholarly fixation. Garage sales give other indications of the high intellectual level of the citizenry. Piles of READER’S DIGEST condensed books surround the tables, along with pop novels by luminaries such as Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy. Who says people in Queens don’t know how to read? The image of hair oafs, construction workers, postal clerks, truck drivers and assorted blue collar types in their back yards in their undershirts watching Met and Yankee games while belching and farting is all wrong.

Yet it cannot be denied that the invidious propinquity of Manhattan has its effect. The intriguing closeness of PUBLISHER’S ROW casts an hypnotic web. Hundreds of Queens writers proceed to the western most stretches, in ones and twos and stare at the alluring towers of the golden isle for extended periods, whimpering softly at its tantalizing closeness. Some even venture to Madison Avenue and walk into lobbies where big publishers have their offices, and stare at building directories. Eventually they leave, weeping, and go back to their lairs of despond, on subway trains filled with the autochotonous inhabitants reading stupid tabloids, comic books, or encounter ladies of a certain age with string holders on their eyeglasses, deeply engrossed in the latest pop romance. And so, to their own domiciles, their eyes now filling with hope and resolve, their minds focusing on their next dazzling piece of literary creation.

It behooves me to inform you of the seemingly invisible cultural resources of Queens, the proximity to institutions such as museums and concert halls. Those writers who would frequent them are imbued with a certain anonymity. While in certain precincts of Manhattan, where seemingly everyone is a writer or an artist, and is ready to tell you without being asked, in Queens, one is generally loathe to discuss it. Therefore, none of those overheard conversations in Manhattan where a writer is talking about his latest achievement in arty tones and effete delivery, dropping names and cute allusions with omniscient laughter. In Queens, discussing such matter openly will get you a long hard look, and maybe even a kick in the balls. Around here the inhabitants don’t like people putting on airs. Short of what they might ask you how much you make out of writing. If you tell the truth, there will be a look of pitying contempt, a snicker, and a turned back.

Queens, therefore, at best, will give you indifference in its workaday, plebian sensibility. Naturally enough, manifestations of a thriving creative ferment in the literary arts are most evident and can most accurately be gauged by citing all university, college, community college writing, MFA programs and adding exclamatory phraseology after every institution, and verbal signifiers regarding miraculous places where creative epiphanies occur on a regular basis. MFA degrees are how progress in literature is measured, and the sign of high seriousness in the arts. Would anyone seriously question its efficacy? Want details? St. John’s University is a utilitarian institution that gives you practical job skills and does not aspire to creativity. Queens College might have some. York College is a remedial reading institute. Queensboro Community College and LaGuardia College specialize in the bottom of the barrel academically.

The particular mystique of Queens, as a hard lump to swallow, a rough, crude hole, a tough talking bastion of indigenous, “native New Yorkers” is not as true as it once was. Would you believe that Queens is the most ethnically dive4se county in the whole country? Well, don’t, but it will still be true. Recent immigrants are taking over whole neighborhoods and enriching them with the pungent aroma of the cultures that they brought with them. And as a result, that rough patois known to the whole country by TV sitcoms, is slowly withdrawing to Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Manhattan rents are so astronomical that effete Manhattanites are lowering themselves and crossing the East River to Astoria. Their smart shops and trendy eateries are following them, along with roller skates, mineral water sipping and other stylistic symbols. It’s only a matter of time before they move further inland, changing western Queens forever.

The time is come for name dropping. Who are we to mention to impress the world with the worthiness of our beloved borough? Nobody of moment. Entirely dwelling in the shades of obscurity. If anybody here made it, they’d scoot off to Manhattan and re-invent themselves.

So there it is. If you live in the American heartland and dream of moving to the great metropolis, dream on, and have a thought to your living arrangements. Manhattan will be too much for you to handle. Even classical garrets are out of sight. Even shitholes are beyond your means. Unless you want to live in a large cardboard box or in subway tunnels, you might have to settle for Queens. Then you will know of what I speak. Come here in the dubious realm of Manhattan’s shadow.

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