Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Andrea Simon | Longing for a 1950s Camelot
Author Guest / October 23, 2019

When I announced to my friends, family, and writing colleagues that I finally secured a contract to publish a novel-in-stories, Floating in the Neversink, about growing up in Brooklyn and the Catskill Mountains from 1955-1961, I received unexpected enthusiasm. Certainly, my older family members anticipated memories of gossiping on city brownstone stoops and grabbing a Chinese lunch on Flatbush Avenue, and my growing-up friends hoped to recapture memories of make-out parties in the Catskill day camp meeting house during humid summer nights. But I was surprised by the interest of the younger relatives and friends, my daughter’s Generation X and the Millennials. Some were movie buffs and loved cult favorites like Dirty Dancing, Sweet Lorraine, and A Walk on the Moon, romanticizing the summers of that era, or more recent movies like immigrant life in Brooklyn. Many had heard their parents’ and grandparents’ stories; others were obsessed by Amazon’s 1950s-set comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. But I suspected this interest was more layered: young and old were attracted to a time when life was seemingly more humanly connected. I looked for verification of my theory, and I lazily began on social media. I searched Facebook for groups relating to the…