The American Scholar is one of those publications I should read but usually pass up in lieu of the new issue of Everyday Food or Blueprint (my current guilty pleasures).

But this month’s cover story demanded my attention. Wait! You want to talk to me about books and Brooklyn (two items I could easily add to my list of favorite things this week)? When? I’m available, right now, actually. Please. I’m listening.

And so I dove into the article. Ready to scoop up every ounce of praise the author may want to heap on my beloved Brooklyn writers. Tell me again how delightful Nicole Krauss is! Remind me why Emily Barton’s Brookland was one of my favorite books of 2007! Tell me about authors I’ve not yet discovered! I’m here to be enlightened… but… wait…

Rude Awakening #1:

You can see it from Manhattan if you look carefully across the East River. You can even go there if you follow a young couple (he’s got a goatee and she has a ponytail) onto the F train. But if you’re not blessed to reside within walking distance of Prospect Park, you can always read about Brooklyn in the work of the writers who live there or find inspiration there. Brooklyn principles can be found anywhere that young people gather to share their search for love and meaning, a search that they alone are qualified to pursue by virtue of their pristine vision of the deep oneness of things. Whereas physical danger or emotional grief leaves most people lonely or ruined or dead, they triumph over adversity.

To achieve this miracle, certain writers produce Brooklyn Books of Wonder. Take mawkish self-indulgence, add a heavy dollop of creamy nostalgia, season with magic realism, stir in a complacency of faith, and you’ve got wondrousness. The only thing that’s more wondrous than the BBoW narratives themselves is the vanity of the authors who deliver their epistles from Fort Greene with mock-naïve astonishment, as if saying: “I can’t really believe I’m writing this. And it’s such an honor that you’re reading it.” Actually, they’re as vain and mercenary as anyone else, but they mask these less endearing traits under the smiley façade of an illusory Eden they’ve recreated in the low-rise borough across the water from corrupt Manhattan.

Rude Awakening #2:

For the BBoWs, every day is September 10th.

And indeed, the author, Melvin Jules Bukiet, is right. Many of today’s young author’s are drawn to the happy ending. But is this truly because of an idealized state of mind created by their Brooklyn mentality? Vanity? An inability to face reality? A false sense of utopia?

Or perhaps it’s the voice of a young world looking for a happy ending, speaking together as a generation who can see so few happy endings on the horizon: Iraq, global warming, high divorce rates, social security, the list goes on. Unlike Mr. Bukiet, I like to think that to myself and the writers of Brooklyn Books of Wonder every day is September 12th and we are searching for a world that doesn’t end in terror or war or environmental disaster. We’re looking for a better world–one with a happy ending.