How Brooklyn became a writers' mecca

The guy at the checkout at a Brooklyn branch of Trader Joe's, a wildly popular speciality grocery chain, had a spray of blond hair, a masters in literature and a California drawl on the words: "Hey, man." He was packing the soy chorizo into a brown bag when he glanced at the book I was carrying – a copy of Brooklyn Is, a 1939 essay by the author and journalist James Agee – and asked if I'd read it. I shook my head. "Man, it's amazing," he said. "Everyone in Brooklyn should read it."