In an interview on Essential New York Novels

Finally, The Fortress of Solitude takes us outside Manhattan. It begins in a part of Brooklyn now known as Boerum Hill, but back before it took on its gentrified character and name. Tell us about Jonathan Lethem’s book.

Lethem was one of the first people to write about the new Brooklyn. Like Catcher in the Rye, Fortress of Solitude was a beautiful coming-of-age novel infused with references to the popular culture of the day.

You’ve called Lethem’s work “brownstone and bodega realism”. Are outer-borough writers changing the trajectory of the New York novel?

A lot of the writers who come to New York now settle in Brooklyn as the result of economics. The prosperity of the 90s and the early part of this century might have been good for Manhattan in some ways but the boom meant that many of the most creative migrants to the city are settling in Brooklyn and even other boroughs. I’m sure that will affect the development of New York novels.

How did the 9/11 attacks change New Yorkers and the novels they write?

It’s very hard to write about New York without reference to that event, which was the most dramatic event to occur in New York history since at least the Civil War Draft Riots in 1863, and maybe ever. Norman Mailer once said to me, “You should wait 10 years before you write about September 11.” I chose to ignore that advice, with The Good Life, because I wanted to capture the texture of the emotional response to that event, which is fading. But I’d like to think that someone out there, someone who did wait 10 years, is going to write a novel that addresses September 11 in some great way.

Did the attacks change the city a lot and indelibly?

Not as much as we thought it would. In the days after September 11, we used to hear that nothing would ever be the same again. We all briefly imagined that our lives would be transformed. Some people did change. They changed their jobs; they left their spouses. And then, of course, there were those who lost loved ones and were deeply affected forever.

I do see some positive cultural change. I think New Yorkers are much more aware of their fellow citizens. When I first came to New York people wouldn’t make eye contact – they would literally step over bodies and they walked through the city with tunnel vision. Now people are more aware, more alert and more willing to play Good Samaritan. Now people are more likely to look at each other in subways and in elevators, partly because they’re wondering whether the person next to them would pull them from the rubble or maybe because they’re wondering if that person could be carrying a bottle of anthrax. But regardless of what prompts this interest in others, we’re all a little less self-involved.