Boy donates bar mitzvah money to help 'Liberty' musical make it to Broadway

Joanna Molloy

Wednesday, April 6th 2011, 4:00 AM

 

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Jesse Naranjo (c.) stands with his mother Rachel, father Rodrigo, and sister Sophia. He donated all of his bar mitzvah money.

"A lot of people aren't familiar with the story of how the Statue of Liberty came to the U.S., and I learned about it from this musical, not from school," Jesse said.

‎"No one with 'literary' aspirations will expect to earn a living by publishing books; the glory days when publishers still waffled between patronage and commerce will be much lamented. The lit-lovers who used to become editors and agents will direct MFA programs instead; the book industry will become as rational—that is, as single-mindedly devoted to profit—as every other capitalist industry."

Will? Is it not to a considerable extent already so?

The author marks the boundaries of literary Brooklyn as DUMBO and Prospect Heights, but it is more accurate to draw its boundaries as a triangle that goes from Greenpoint in the northwest to Victorian Flatbush in the east to Red Hook in the southwest.

As a native New Yorker, Brooklynite, alumnus of a CCNY graduate creative writing program, poet/translator and fiction reviewer I am on the periphery of both literary cultures, and much of the article resonates with the ring of truth. However, in an era of government budget cuts I don't see MFA programs continuing to proliferate; indeed, they may prove vulnerable to the budget ax.