Telling Brooklyn Stories

Reading Lucy by Jennifer Egan is about Jennifer Egan’s research of a woman named Lucy’s who worked during World War II in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Lucy’s was married to her husband Albert Kolkin a year after they met, and since he was in the navy, she traveled around a lot. During her time working in the navy yard, shipfitting school & the shipfitting shop, she wrote letters, almost daily, to Albert explaining what was going on and how she was. She was truly in love with her husband, throwing in kisses at the end of her letters. Lucy considered herself a shipfitter, which means third class. She would lay out the metal structural parts of ship and stencil them to be cut out by another woman. Since men were drafted into the war, women worked there and by January of 1945, 4,657 women worked in the navy yard. She was excellent at her job. Being a timekeeper, she got to spend time writing letters to Albert every two weeks. She was in her mid-twenties and Albert was much older but he liked reading her letters because he wanted to figure out what her life would turn out to be like. Later on in the years, Albert would be shipped to Del Monte and Lucy would move with him and work as a waitress. The letter would stop for about a year time until he shipped out in 1945. Before he shipped out, he sent a letter to Lucy stating they have a lot of thing to cram in before he leave, but he would miss her dearly.

“Reading Lucy”, is a essay written by ,well renowned writer, Jennifer Egan. In her essay Jennifer described how she formed a ‘friendship’ with a woman named Lucille Kolkin, a navy yard worker during World War II. While researching for a novel about the Brooklyn Navy Yard ,Jennifer met Lucille at the Brooklyn Historical Society. She met Lucille through a  series of letters that Lucille wrote to her husband Alfred, a navy soldier, in 1944. Jennifer explains that their relationship was strictly professional at first but as she went on reading Lucille’s letters she began to relate to her life, and found her to be an intriguing and enjoyed reading Lucille’s letters. Jennifer went on to say that after she Google searched Lucille and discovered her death she did not read Lucille’s letters with the same hopeful excitement she once did. When she finished Lucille’s letters she contemplated weather or not she should call Lucille’s remaining relatives to find out more about Lucille’s life after the letters stopped, even though it did not relate to her research. But when she reads Alfred’s letters to Lucille she was pleased and decided to let Alfred and Lucille live remainder of their lives after the letters stopped. The summary ends with a few hopeful lines from Alfred’s last letter to Lucille, ” I’m looking forward to those five days together Lucy, I want us to cram a lot of things into it. It’ll be easy if we plan it a little bit… You’ll see!”

Who Knows Brooklyn is a story written by Ben McGrath about two “historians” that live in Brooklyn competing in life for no reason. The two historians names are Brian Merlis and John Manbeck. In the story it explains how Brian Merlis received a copy of a book called “Historic Photos of Brooklyn” which was made by John Manbeck. He didn’t like the book at all and wrote reviews about to two different Brooklyn newspapers.

This resulted in the two men having a discussion in which Merlis asked Manbeck, “Why don’t you publish a list of my books?” and which Manbeck responded “Why don’t you put out good books?” in which he then reaches into his bag and pulls out his latest book leaving Merlis in a not so good stance.

Throughout the story the two men continue bickering over Who Know’s Brooklyn when neither of them are trained historians and were actually just at local high schools and colleges.

Who Knows Brooklyn? by Ben McGrath is about two untrained male historians, from Brooklyn, who obviously have a problem with each other. Brian Merlis is a social studies high school teacher who collects photographs and lives on the south shore of Brooklyn. He published eighteen of his own books through Israelowitz publishing and calls himself an old-school localist. John Manbeck on the other hand is an author who has published seven books through Turner, a vanity press, served as an official historian of Brooklyn from 1193 to 2001, and lives in Brooklyn Heights. Merlis received Manbeck’s book “Historic Photographs of Brooklyn” for his forty-fifth birthday from a friend and doesn’t really seem to consider this a good gift. In the past there was had a falling out between the two where Manbeck accused Merlis not asking for permission when using the Kingsborough Historical Society’s material without proper given credit. Merlis stated that Manbeck was on sabbatical. He also felt that Manbeck was jealous of him because he was accumulating a big photo collection over a long period of time and Manbeck wasn’t doing as much. In the end, they use a current historian named Ron Schweiger in their feud. Manbeck says that he’s known Ron for a long time and taught him all he knows but Merlis replies back by saying Ron takes the high road but when he gets questions, he calls him for help. This feud will continue until the two come to an understanding.