Weird and Wonderful

An anthology of Garden State writing celebrates the state’s multiple personalities.

By: Susan Van Dongen
   New Jersey has always had self-esteem issues, with big-city envy of either New York or Philadelphia. And to get even more complicated, South Jersey has always felt like the underachieving younger sibling, trying to live up to affluent North Jersey. That’s changing, of course, but it wasn’t so long ago that the southern part of the state wanted to secede from the north.
   Writer and editor Irina Reyn recognized the multiple personalities of the Garden State and, inspired in part by the magazine Weird N.J., put the call out to some of the best homegrown authors to recollect their experiences. The anthology, Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, $14), is the result.
   With New Jersey’s "renaissance" — the popularity of the HBO series The Sopranos, movies like Garden State, Jersey Girl and Clerks as well as bands like Fountains of Wayne — Ms. Reyn thought it would be timely to make a literary contribution. The book is a collection of edgy, irreverent works of nonfiction from such writers as Tom Perrotta, Frederick Reiken, Jonathan Ames and Joshua Braff.
   Ms. Reyn will be at P.J.’s Coffee House in Highland Park for a book event June 12. She’ll have two of the anthology’s authors with her — Adam Lowenstein, who writes humorously about growing up in Highland Park, and Elizabeth Keenan, who remembers her teen years in Princeton Junction.
   What’s really interesting is that Ms. Reyn came to the United States from Russia, then lived in Brooklyn for much of her life, settling in New Jersey just seven years ago. Her circumstances have given her an observer’s perspective on the quirkiness of the Garden State.
   "(Not living in New Jersey) gave me unique license to edit this book," she says. "I feel like I haven’t lived here long enough to be from New Jersey, but at the same time, I haven’t developed the hometown pride or the ‘shame’ other people might feel. I’m lucky enough to enjoy living here but still be fascinated by the state.
   "As an immigrant, I felt very much in tune with New Jersey — I really identified with it, suffering from the same kind of identity questions," Ms. Reyn adds. "That’s why I always had this affection for New Jersey."
   Ms. Keenan’s essay, "Suburban Legends," touches on nostalgia for her childhood stomping ground of Princeton Junction, but that’s not the main focus.
   "A large part of my story was this feeling of the immortality of being a teenager," she says. "One of the things about Princeton Junction was a sense of a protective environment for the kids growing up. We walked to school and walked home. My summers were all about hanging around outside and the parents could be assured that we would be all right. But then there was this other reality that would creep in sometimes — kids dying in car accidents or from suicide. (I was reflecting on) what actual death means once you experience it. It was a hard revelation to have."
   As a teenager, she and her "blood sister" (also named Liz) were fascinated with death and the afterlife. They craved stories about creepy, so-called haunted places throughout the state. But before the Internet, they couldn’t do much research, so they had to rely on their classmates’ tales of visits to spooky sites in Toms River, Howell, Atco and — the promised land of weird — the Pinelands.
   "Half the fun was driving around on cheap gas and finding weird little pockets of New Jersey," Ms. Keenan says.
   The highlight of Ms. Keenan’s piece is a road trip she and Liz made to Leeds Point in Atlantic County, seeking the house where the Leeds family — of the Jersey Devil fame — supposedly lived. In a perfect teen horror movie scenario, they were way back on a darkened abandoned road, and Liz dropped her burning cigarette on the floor of the car. In the scramble to pick it up, she saw something run by the car and screamed.
   "Then we both screamed when the car refused to start," Ms. Keenan writes. "I thought about all of the urban legends that started out like this, with hook-hand convicts and phantom hitchhikers. And then headlights were coming toward us and we froze: it was a police car."
   "We still believe we saw something run by the car," says Ms. Keenan, who went to West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, before there was a north and south. "It was probably a deer but it was one of those things. With all of the outings, you got so caught up in the atmosphere and the feeling of spookiness. It’s your desire to see something. I don’t maintain that we saw the Jersey Devil but it was terrifying, just the feeling of being on that road in complete darkness. The adrenaline rush helped bring some excitement to our little New Jersey lives."
Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State, edited by Irina Reyn and with stories by Elizabeth Keenan and Adam Lowenstein, is available in bookstores and online. Ms. Keenan, Mr. Lowenstein and Ms. Reyn will present the book at P.J.’s Coffee House, 315 Raritan Ave., Highland Park, June 12, 7 p.m. (732) 828-2323; www.pjscoffee.com. ‘Living on the Edge of the World’ on the Web: www.simonsays.com