Some read­ers may turn to essay col­lec­tions for a break from nov­els; col­lec­tions allow read­ers to dip in and out, mov­ing flu­id­ly between sub­jects with per­haps less emo­tion­al commitment. 

Jay Neugeboren’s essay col­lec­tion, Dick­ens in Brook­lyn, asks read­ers for a large emo­tion­al invest­ment from the very first pages, and it is a request that is immense­ly reward­ed. Writ­ten in great detail and earnest­ly observed, he tack­les men­tal ill­ness, par­ent­ing, the trau­ma expe­ri­enced by Holo­caust sur­vivors, Jew­ish iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball, and more. In his essays, he reveals so much per­son­al pain and suf­fer­ing with zero self-pity. There is, in fact, a sin­cer­i­ty to Neugeboren’s writ­ing that is so pro­found, a boy­ish­ness still evi­dent even though the author is now in his eight­ies, it makes a read­er want to sit by his side, learn from him, and then give him a warm hug.

We learn ear­ly on that Neugeboren’s par­ents had a dys­func­tion­al mar­riage, that his moth­er was emo­tion­al­ly abu­sive and his father and younger broth­er strug­gled with men­tal ill­ness. Mon­ey was scarce, and his child­hood — poor, crowd­ed, and full of eccen­tric char­ac­ters — was tru­ly Dick­en­sian, of the Flat­bush, Brook­lyn vari­ety. The title essay recalls his par­ents painstak­ing­ly sav­ing for a twen­ty-vol­ume set of Charles Dick­ens, a sym­bol of their hope to rise beyond their cramped apart­ment and chal­leng­ing life cir­cum­stances into the larg­er Amer­i­can dream.

To call Neuge­boren resilient is to under­sell the remark­able nature of his spir­it. A read­er would be remiss not to pay close atten­tion to the lessons Neuge­boren imparts on how we, too, might weath­er life’s shift­ing narratives. 

In ​“The Morn­ing Line: A Writer’s Odds,” he recounts thou­sands of lit­er­ary rejec­tions and con­cludes that the only les­son is to ​“keep try­ing!” (To date, he has pub­lished more than twen­ty books and won numer­ous awards). In ​“Star­ing at the Sea,” he describes writ­ing as the dai­ly work of build­ing tran­si­tions, mov­ing from what was writ­ten yes­ter­day toward what might come tomor­row. In ​“One on One,” an essay about sin­gle par­ent­hood, he writes, ​“The habit of par­ent­ing — of begin­ning and end­ing each day with my chil­dren — this was a habit I loved, in part, because it allowed me to believe — even in the most dif­fi­cult of times, what I some­times feared was not so: that I was, in fact, use­ful to oth­ers, and that because of this, my life mattered.”

Help­ing oth­ers reveals self-worth. Per­sis­tence mat­ters more than rejec­tion. The hard work of each day car­ries us to the next. 

In Pirkei Avot, the sage Ben Bag-Bag teach­es that we might ​“turn it and turn it, for every­thing is in it.” Indeed, Neuge­boren has done just that, reflect­ing and exam­in­ing both the mun­dane and the holy — uncov­er­ing the beau­ty beneath his pain, and the lessons of a life lived deeply and with dev­as­tat­ing honesty.