The Last Fine Time by Verlyn Klinkenborg at La Muse Living Library
“For the library at La Muse, I figure you’ve already got a ton of books about New York City so I brought one about the place I grew up. Buffalo is a sadsack down-on-its-luck Great Lakes rust-belt town, distinguished in recent memory (after the Blizzard of ‘77 was no longer recent) by having been the only city who’s NFL football team got to the Super Bowl 4 times - and lost all 4.
When I spotted an advance proof of this book in the slurry heap at The New Yorker in 1990 I didn’t expect to read it. I was not interested in a book on Buffalo. I looked at the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1, the images of the insurance assessor’s map in City Hall, and was pulled up short. This is something special, I remember thinking.”
David Georgi, August 26, 2009, translator and poet of Francois Villon.