Whom Should We Name Brooklyn’s Nameless Parks After?
Paul Auster
Unlike Hamill, Auster’s not from Brooklyn, but he moved here before the borough was “repulsive with novelists, cancerous with novelists,” as whatsisname once said. Auster arrived in Park Slope in the mid-80s, decamping from a half-decade in Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill, and has remained there since. “It’s a little more lively than Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens,” he told me in 2010. “And there is the park, which is the great advantage. And I’ve always felt that Park Slope was like a miniature Upper West Side, it has that kind of bustle and density to it.” He may be more Central Slope than South Slope, but he’s the quintessential Park Slope writer, aka the quintessential Park Slope resident.
