There’s a letter in the first few pages of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, supposedly written by the author of the collection, Lester Bangs, from heaven. Bangs tells his friend, the critic Dave Marsh, how he thinks they made a mistake and let him into heaven where Jim Croce and Karen Carpenter are the big acts. Bangs talks about how he keeps applying to get into hell, but they think he was too good hearted. He then goes on to tell Marsh, “Take it from me, Dave. Heaven was Detroit, Michigan. Who woulda thunk it?”

How does Dunham play into all of this? For starters, with all the talk of great writers, bands, visual artists and just about everything else under the sun coming out of my beloved borough, I feel as if Dunham’s Girls does the best job of grasping what it’s like to live in this era of gentrified Brooklyn, and one day will be recognized as one of the works that best tells the story of the here and now (here being Brooklyn, now obviously being 2012-ish). While I love so many writers from Brooklyn, not many around Dunham’s age are writing books or stories that use their current location as a setting.  But Dunham does. She’s writing, acting and oftentimes directing a show about the Brooklyn she knows, and doing a really fine job.

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