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<\/a><\/p>\nThe reason Pittsburgh is the perfect backdrop for drama is its relative modesty. It is modestly sized, and modestly priced, and modestly aspirational. Nobody arrives in hot pursuit of fame or fortune. It is neither East nor West. Also, not the Midwest. It doesn\u2019t share the fraught obsessions or weirdness of the South. It\u2019s not cold and desolate like the North. As Joseph O\u2019Neill said in an interview about why he chose Pittsburgh as a setting for his most recent novel, Godwin<\/a>, it\u2019s \u201cnot on the way to anywhere.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pittsburgh is no tabula rasa\u2014there\u2019s too much history to argue it doesn\u2019t have a culture all its own\u2014but it does feel like a city that could be anything for any person, rich or poor, a place that is both always changing and hasn\u2019t changed a lick in fifty years. It is an every-town that is the perfect place to come of age.<\/p>\n I set my sophomore novel, Fine Young People<\/a>\u2014about the mysterious death of a hockey player at a Catholic prep school\u2014in Pittsburgh, because I couldn\u2019t imagine high school anywhere else. While most of the action takes place on campus, the kids find their way to the Strip District, take a ride on the incline, and dance on the river-cruising Clipper Ship. They fall in love, and out of love, and eventually, they leave. Though some of them will come back. That\u2019s the thing about Pittsburgh: I can always return to find that it\u2019s still the place of my youth.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here are seven books that show Pittsburgh is the best place to come of age\u2014at any age.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Mysteries of Pittsburgh<\/a> by Michael Chabon<\/p>\n Chabon\u2019s debut is the tragicomic coming-of-age of Art Bechstein, during the summer after he graduates from college. Art makes friends and lovers, exploring his sexual identity as he reckons with his mobster father\u2019s sins. After meeting his buddy, Cleveland, at the boiler plant, which Art affectionately calls the Cloud Factory, they head out to collect illegal interest for Uncle Lenny, a local loan shark. It is on this journey that Art gets his first street lesson in economics, \u201cthe precise measurement of shit eating, it\u2019s the science of misery.\u201d Nothing captures the feeling of growing up quite like Art\u2019s Museum of Real Life. He is a tourist in his own city, a spectator amused by the wretched circumstances of other people\u2019s lives, until finally, he sees the world for what it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n Emily, Alone<\/a> by Stewart O\u2019Nan<\/p>\n Somehow Stewart O\u2019Nan managed to burrow deeply into the psyche of an old lady for Emily, Alone. There is no character in fiction who feels more real than Emily Maxwell. She reads the newspaper, cleans before the housekeeper arrives, and waits impatiently for thank you notes from her grandchildren.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Emily traverses Pittsburgh in her cobalt-blue Subaru Outback, I found myself on Google maps, tracing her routes around my hometown. Her journey ends when she leaves the city to visit the rural Pennsylvania outpost where she grew up. There, she finds the house of her childhood, restored to its original white with forest-green shutters, and her mother\u2019s hydrangeas in full bloom. For the first time, she doesn\u2019t wish to distance herself from the child she once was, proving that nobody is ever too old to come of age. Fortunately, Emily will be back this fall in O\u2019Nan\u2019s newest book, Evensong<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Perks of Being a Wallflower<\/a> by Stephen Chbosky<\/p>\n The Perks of Being a Wallflower is not the only YA novel set it Pittsburgh that was made into a big Hollywood movie, but it is the one most people think about. Through a series of letters, Charlie tells the story of his freshman year at a suburban Pittsburgh high school, culminating in a mental health crisis that stems from past trauma. The heaviest of topics, including violence and child abuse, are balanced with the hopeful sense that friendship can carry a young person through. Chbosky reminds us that only in youth can we feel \u201cinfinite,\u201d and such intensity has the power to both save and destroy a teenager, maybe at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chbosky and I grew up in the same suburb. Scenes from the film were shot in my neighborhood. Stewart O\u2019Nan may be the bard of the city proper, but Chbosky understands growing up in the suburbs like no one else: the longing, the alienation, and the repose.<\/p>\n An American Childhood<\/a> by Annie Dillard<\/p>\n In her most famous work, Dillard offers vignettes about growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. The memoir is a celebration of books, curiosity, and pursuing one\u2019s passion, and a reminder of the possibilities of childhood before helicopter parenting became a thing. Growing up, Dillard felt like she could fly. If the world were a kinder place, all children would feel that way. An American Childhood opens with an observation about memory. When everything else is gone, all the names and faces, what will be left is topology. This idea\u2014that memory is continuously deformed by stretching, twisting and bending\u2014is central to the coming-of-age narrative.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brothers and Keepers<\/a> by John Edgar Wideman<\/p>\n John Edgar Wideman\u2019s memoir is so different from Annie Dillard\u2019s, it might be surprising that they were written about the same city by two writers who were of the same generation, except for the fact that it\u2019s not surprising at all. While Dillard explores the intellectual curiosities that her privilege affords, Wideman is forced to return to the reality that he was never able to escape, try as he might, when his brother shows up on his doorstep\u2014literally and figuratively\u2014on the run from the law. Brothers and Keepers interrogates punishment, not justice, because justice implies a balancing of the scales that is not America\u2019s reality. And it is about the unbreakable bond of two brothers, despite being pulled in opposing directions by devasting individual choices and inescapable institutional forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n These Violent Delights<\/a> by Micah Nemerever<\/p>\n