Joshua Henkin
In ‘Morningside Heights,’ Novelist Joshua Henkin Returns to His Old Neighborhood
Joshua Henkin’s fourth novel, “Morningside Heights,” is the story of many things: a marriage, a changing neighborhood in New York City, an incurable illness, and love and families.
The plot centers on Pru, who grows up Orthodox and meets Spence, a largely secular Jewish professor — he’s a young superstar Shakespeare scholar, teaching at Columbia. Pru is Spence’s grad student, but they fall in love, marry, and have a daughter. In his 50s, Spence starts becoming forgetful, and is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The novel, then, hinges on the question: What happens when the person you married becomes a different person?
Henkin himself grew up in Morningside Heights; his father, the professor and human rights law scholar Louis Henkin, provided the emotional impetus for the novel; he died at 92 after his own battle with Alzheimer’s. In a wide-ranging conversation, we spoke about the need for writing emotionally autobiographical fiction, growing up in New York City, his father’s view of Judaism as a “Reform Orthodox Jew,” and how there shouldn’t be easy takeaways or messages from fiction.
