My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir
My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a lyrical remembrance of neighborhood life that has vanished from the culture.

Best-selling author Avery Corman vividly recreates the vibrant, colorful neighborhood where he grew up – in the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s. He recalls candy stores and bookmakers, egg creams and double feature movies, street games like stickball and Johnny- on-the-pony, school days of a different era, social mores that have disappeared.

His was the generation of children of the home front during World War II, and he recounts how the war was embedded in daily life, and how children became literate through newspaper coverage of the war, and through Dick and Jane and comic books. He remembers in his neighborhood a deep sense of community and shared experience.

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a memoir that is urban history. Featured are 16 vintage photographs. Avery Corman also discusses the factors that altered the Bronx, in a decline that was particularly rapid and vast, before the area began to rebuild.

As the author of Kramer vs. Kramer, a common assumption has been that Avery Corman was himself divorced; he was not. He was, however, a child of divorce at a time and place when divorce was rare, an experience woven through the narrative.

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is told with the storytelling skills that have made Avery Corman a critically acclaimed author whose books have been published throughout the world.
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My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir
My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a lyrical remembrance of neighborhood life that has vanished from the culture.

Best-selling author Avery Corman vividly recreates the vibrant, colorful neighborhood where he grew up – in the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s. He recalls candy stores and bookmakers, egg creams and double feature movies, street games like stickball and Johnny- on-the-pony, school days of a different era, social mores that have disappeared.

His was the generation of children of the home front during World War II, and he recounts how the war was embedded in daily life, and how children became literate through newspaper coverage of the war, and through Dick and Jane and comic books. He remembers in his neighborhood a deep sense of community and shared experience.

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a memoir that is urban history. Featured are 16 vintage photographs. Avery Corman also discusses the factors that altered the Bronx, in a decline that was particularly rapid and vast, before the area began to rebuild.

As the author of Kramer vs. Kramer, a common assumption has been that Avery Corman was himself divorced; he was not. He was, however, a child of divorce at a time and place when divorce was rare, an experience woven through the narrative.

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is told with the storytelling skills that have made Avery Corman a critically acclaimed author whose books have been published throughout the world.
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My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir

My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir

by Avery Corman
My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir

My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir

by Avery Corman

Hardcover

$19.95 
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Overview

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a lyrical remembrance of neighborhood life that has vanished from the culture.

Best-selling author Avery Corman vividly recreates the vibrant, colorful neighborhood where he grew up – in the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s. He recalls candy stores and bookmakers, egg creams and double feature movies, street games like stickball and Johnny- on-the-pony, school days of a different era, social mores that have disappeared.

His was the generation of children of the home front during World War II, and he recounts how the war was embedded in daily life, and how children became literate through newspaper coverage of the war, and through Dick and Jane and comic books. He remembers in his neighborhood a deep sense of community and shared experience.

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a memoir that is urban history. Featured are 16 vintage photographs. Avery Corman also discusses the factors that altered the Bronx, in a decline that was particularly rapid and vast, before the area began to rebuild.

As the author of Kramer vs. Kramer, a common assumption has been that Avery Corman was himself divorced; he was not. He was, however, a child of divorce at a time and place when divorce was rare, an experience woven through the narrative.

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is told with the storytelling skills that have made Avery Corman a critically acclaimed author whose books have been published throughout the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781569805183
Publisher: Barricade Books, Incorporated
Publication date: 06/10/2014
Pages: 192
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Avery Corman is the author of the novels Kramer vs. Kramer, Oh, God!, The Bust-Out King, The Old Neighborhood, 50, Prized Possessions, The Big Hype, A Perfect Divorce, The Boyfriend from Hell. He has also written non-fiction for many publications, including numerous articles for the New York Times. He lives in Fort Lee, N.J.

Table of Contents

175 Field Place 5

Elementary School 8

The Home Front 15

My Aunt and Uncle 19

A Twilight Zone Type of Occurrence 23

The Talking Dog 25

Other Dogs 27

Reading 29

Street Games 31

Candy and Things 35

Going to the Movies 39

Summers 43

The Bronx Home News 46

Alexander's Department Store 49

Rooting For Baseball Teams 52

Joe Dimaggio's Glove 58

Playing Baseball 60

Edgar Allan Poe 62

"Have You Got Any Information?" 64

Religious Observance 66

Barber Shops 73

Groceries, Delis, Bakeries, Appetizing Stores 76

Ice Cream Parlors 78

The Truth About My Father 80

Television 87

Schoolyard Basketball 91

Junior High School 93

The Bronx Zoo 99

The 1951 City College Basketball Scandal 101

Emil Verban 106

High School 108

The Paradise Pizzeria 118

Getting To Arthur Avenue 120

Chinese Restaurants 121

The Concourse Plaza Hotel 123

Jack Molinas 125

Laurel & Hardy Go Ice Skating 133

Absence Of A Manila Envelope 136

The Tan Jacket 138

College 140

The Reality 149

Voting 153

Fulfilling Your Military Obligation 155

Once More 159

Leaving 162

What People are Saying About This

Associated Press Staff

Before Brooklyn became a hipster haven with pricey real estate and the Bronx became the poster child for urban blight, neighborhood life in those outer boroughs was pretty much the same.
That's the recollection of Avery Corman, who grew up in the Bronx during the 1940s and '50s and went on to write novels that became the basis for the hit movies "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "Oh God!" In a later novel,
"The Old Neighborhood," the hard-driving protagonist reconnects with his childhood neighborhood in the Bronx, rediscovers his roots and finds inner peace and contentment.
Now Corman has returned to that same nostalgia-laden turf, this time with a charming and lyrical memoir, "My Old Neighborhood Remembered," about his Bronx boyhood in a nontraditional working-class household with a divorced mother, an older sister, and an aunt and uncle, both of them deaf mutes.

People tend to romanticize their childhood, but the post-World War II Bronx was a time and place that conveyed a sense of community and vitality to those who grew up there. Many have moved on but still carry fond memories that Corman's quick read is sure to evoke. His anecdotes and reminiscences are likely to resonate most strongly with fellow Bronxites, but readers unfamiliar with the world of his childhood are sure to be charmed and entertained by this delightful account of city life more than a half-century ago.

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