“Men of Letters have lived upon the Island, but their labors have not been especially identified with it and we are not aware that any of its local traditions have been commemorated in song or in story.”
—George William Curtis in “Literature on Staten Island” from
The Staten Island Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1888.
When George William Curtis wrote those words in 1888, little did he know that in only 7 years the novel “Tom Grogan” would inaugurate the beginnings of that local literature he and his collaborators in The Staten Island Magazine so ardently desired. In subsequent years a number of other fictional works which used Staten Island as a setting were written but when the island’s principal reference work, the five volume “Staten Island and its People”, was published in the early 1930s, only a few tantalizing mentions of local fiction were included. The Staten Island Historian contained reviews of only a few local novels over the course of its many decades and the various reference works that have examined literature set in New York City have never been able to cite more than a mere handful of Staten Island fictional works, if they even took note of any at all. When City University of New York (CUNY) Professor John P. Martin wrote a journal article on the subject in 1992 (Community Review, Volume XII, Numbers One and Two) he was only able to spotlight five written works that had a Staten Island setting. As recently as 2015, the Advance was wondering if Eddie Joyce’s novel “Small Mercies” was the best Staten Island novel ever published (it probably is) without anyone having any idea about what books actually comprised the canon of Staten Island fiction.
In fact, there are over 140 novels, shorts stories and children’s books which use Staten Island as a setting, in whole or in some significant part. While that setting may be only incidental in some of the works, it is utterly key in many others. The themes which are explored are varied and diverse, from historical fiction to sci-fi, from gay romance to Socialist agitprop.
Some themes stand out: from the earliest works, the island is often depicted as an Arcadian retreat but, more frequently, as a useful base for criminal, conspiratorial or even occult acts, with the latter trope enduring to the present day. More recent works almost invariably depict the island as a paradise lost that was forever destroyed by the opening of the Verrazano Bridge and the physical connection to New York City, but it may surprise the modern reader to find out that even in the early 1950s novels of Theodora Dubois, the themes of overdevelopment, ugly architecture and the encroachment of outsiders upon the “natives” can be found. The constant impression, however, is that Staten Island was and still is a place apart, with a location and culture that are unique and distinct from the city with which it is connected, and a place where things can happen and people can exist that can’t happen or exist in the wider metropolis.
This blog is not intended to be a comprehensive listing of every Staten Island fictional work. It is meant to showcase only those works that are most notable or which have the most visually appealing covers and illustrations. For an in-depth examination of the subject, you can consult the reference work.
Staten Island in Fiction 