There is a certain type of building on almost every block, in every neighborhood, in every borough of New York City. A boutique goes in and is gone in a blip; next, a restaurant arrives and then shutters within only a few months; now say hello to an espresso bar—and now say goodbye. On and on and on, a merry-go-round of failed enterprises. Paul, the protagonist of my new novel, Cooler Heads, writes his own fictional column about these buildings called “Cursed Corners.” What is it about such locations? Why do they fail to sustain businesses? Is there something about their premises, their unseen workings, that makes them inhospitable to commercial life? Or could the curse simply be a landlord who charges rents so exorbitant that they ensure economic defeat? But then, in bygone days, too—a time, actually not all that long ago, when nearly every commercial lot in the city was occupied—cursed corners were no less prevalent. In every neighborhood, they lived.
Is the curse real? I like to imagine that it is and that its nature is perverse: morbid and creative, patient and i…