Cartoonist Roz Chast discusses ‘Going Into Town,” her illustrated love letter to New York

New York has always lurked as an uncredited extra in the vast body of hilarity produced by Roz Chast, best known for her cartoons in The New Yorker. The frumpy characters, the off-kilter worldview, the eccentric shops — all speak sotto voce not just of the city, but the Brooklyn of her childhood. It was then the borough of Woody Allen rather than tattooed Williamsburg, and not the destination of choice for the socially or professionally ambitious.

Chast’s romance with the city is now out in the open. Her antic but heartfelt new book, “Going Into Town” (Bloomsbury, 169 pp., $28) is aptly subtitled, “A Love Letter to New York,” and the focus, not surprisingly, is on slender, glamorous Manhattan. Here she talks about her long relationship with the island.

Roz, you and I are children of Brooklyn when it was a place to escape. To me, Manhattan was the shining city on a hill. Did you feel that way?

It was the shining city for me, too. I lived in Manhattan from 1978 till 1987. My husband and I moved to Park Slope just before the birth of our first kid. We left because we couldn’t afford the space we needed. My husband, who is a writer, and I both work at home. So a teensy two-bedroom, which we couldn’t have afforded anyway, wasn’t going to cut it.

You’re not nostalgic for the dirty, dangerous New York of the ’70s and ’80s. But go back further, to the Manhattan of our childhood. It had working docks, the fish market, a crumbling neighborhood full of Abstract Expressionists, block upon block of tenements. Does the place seem kind of airbrushed now?

Manhattan has been airbrushed, no question about that. There’s a lot I miss: the florist district, the Garment District [though traces remain, like M&J Trimmings], the fish market, all the used bookstores, some of the bars and restaurants of my youth. But it’s far from completely airbrushed. Also, it’s important not to confuse the nostalgia for the NYC of the past with nostalgia for my younger years. Actually, I was amazed at how much the Upper West Side had not changed since I lived there. The stationery store where I used to buy my sketch pads is still there. Also, Tip Top Shoes. And Fine and Shapiro!

Does it strike you as strange that the young now seem to prefer Brooklyn? Do you get back there much?

Doesn’t seem strange at all. It’s not for me — I’m too old, for one thing. I like the convenience of Manhattan. Everything’s within walking distance, practically. My next book is going to be about Brooklyn, so I’ve actually been there a lot lately.

“Going Into Town” began as a booklet for your daughter when she moved to Manhattan. Has her experience been very different from yours as a young woman there?

Her experience was different from mine for several reasons. One is that she went to college there. I moved there post-college. So she was seeing it through the lens of a college student: living in a dorm [at first], going to classes, not having to earn a living, first time living away from home. For me, it was the beginning of my adult life.

Your comic sensibility has always seemed universal, yet rooted in Jewish New York. How did the city and its characters, Jewish and otherwise, shape your work?

I really do love New York City. As I said in my book, it’s the only place where I really feel that sense of “home,” or maybe just the place where I feel least out of place. There’s the magic of all these cultures and languages, all the different worlds — entertainment, fashion, art, finance, just for starters — jumbled up together. The architecture, too. Also, there’s a sense of freedom. If you want to wear a dog suit on the subway, be my guest. No one cares, as long as you’re not in their space. I get that.

New York is the setting for countless books and movies. Which are your favorites and why?

I love Woody Allen’s and Martin Scorsese’s NYC movies. Books? “Seize the Day” by Saul Bellow is pretty spectacular. Also “The House of Mirth,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “The Great Gatsby.” Nonfiction-wise, “The Power Broker” by Robert Caro is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Also, “Low Life” by Luc Sante. And, of course, E.B. White’s “Here Is New York.”