When Pope Gregory the Great defined the seven deadly sins, envy made his list. Yet the saint never could have anticipated the provocation of the purchase by husband-and-wife novelists less than 10 years out of college of a grandiose townhouse at Park Slope.

As a result, some Brooklyn literati, who can’t stop buzzing that Jonathan Safran Foer, 28, and Nicole Krauss, 30, are buying a $6.75 million mansion, can blame their sin on the neighbors.

In particular, some of those unabashedly jealous Brooklyn writers wonder how the youthful Mr. Foer – whose second novel, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” was released last month to mixed reviews – came to deserve and afford his new abode.

“I’m envious of him because his house is extremely expensive and incredibly close to mine,” a Park Slope author, Lynn Harris, said last week.

“What is he, 19 now? He should at least have a starter mansion first,” she added.

To Ms. Harris, author of “Breakup Girl to the Rescue! A Superhero’s Guide to Love, and Lack Thereof,” Mr. Foer’s new mansion symbolizes the objectionable aspects of his fiction.

“What people say specifically is that his writing is precious and self-important … and it just makes me think that therefore he must have a precious and self-important brownstone,” she said.

According to the real-estate firm Douglas Elliman’s listing for the residence, the Foers’ new 7,000-square-foot nest on 2nd Street, between Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue, is on a property occupying three lots. The garden alone – which boasts fountains and “large mature trees,” according to Douglas Elliman – covers a pair of 40-by-100-foot lots. The asking price was $6.75 million. Douglas Elliman would not comment on the sale. According to one source, the closing on the townhouse was not yet final, but the payment negotiated was less than $6.75 million.

Ms. Harris said she does not generally begrudge authors fabulous rewards. “Writers should be successful, for God’s sake, we really should,” she said.

Her problem was with Mr. Foer. “There’s got to be someone else equally successful who we hate less,” Ms. Harris said.

The purchase of the townhouse, however, only appeared to fuel that hatred among Mr. Foer’s established critics.

The editor of the New York Press, Alexander Zaitchik, said: “We’re most upset with the fact that the publishing industry creates these it-boy characters… way out of proportion with their actual talent.”

“But his personality doesn’t help things. He’s so precious, over-the-top,” Mr. Zaitchik said of Mr. Foer.

“You just want to punch the guy every time he opens his mouth for an interview,” he said.

Mr. Zaitchik’s publication listed Mr. Foer on its annual roster of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers in 2003.

“And it’s salt on wounds when you hear he just bought a $6-million mansion with his wife, who’s not much better,” Mr. Zaitchik, who lives in Brooklyn, added.

The publishing industry has lavished considerable wealth on this particular “it-boy.” In a review of Mr. Foer’s second book in the New York Press, another Brooklyn writer, Harry Siegel, reported that the novelist received a $500,000 advance for his first book, “Everything Is Illuminated”; $1 million for the movie rights (the film is to be released in August), and another $1 million for “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”

Despite those financial successes, some of those who resented Mr. Foer’s foray into major-league real estate said that, in light of the poor reviews of his second novel, the novelist’s big-ticket buy might have been premature.

One Park Slope writer, Amy Keyishian, said: “I’m going to be checking Craig list to see if he’s looking for 200 roommates to cover the mortgage in two years.”

If “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” does establish Mr. Foer’s status as a one-hit wonder, however, the townhouse purchase will have been well-timed, according to another Park Slope writer, Emily Votruba.

“At least you’ll have the consolation of a brownstone in Brooklyn if your next book is completely retarded,” Ms. Votruba said.

She also said, though, that the townhouse could further jeopardize Mr. Foer’s literary career. With the purchase of a multi-million-dollar home, “You’re not that down-in-the-mouth schlubby writer anymore – you can’t with credibility strike that pose,” Ms. Votruba said.

Given that Mr. Foer’s novels are wrapped around themes of intense suffering – in his first, the Holocaust; in his second, September 11 – the author’s cushy digs may have undermined the premise of his writing, Mr. Zaitchik said.

Mr. Foer, he explained, came from a well-connected family and was always part of the elite.

“He was produced in a laboratory by Joyce Carol Oates,” Mr. Zaitchik said. “So the idea that he’s lived some kind of hard life, finding these truths through suffering, is kind of a joke and always has been.”

Ms. Krauss, Mr. Zaitchik said, “was equally well-bred,” and some writers question the degree to which the purchase of the couple’s new home was actually financed by their literary accomplishments.

Ms. Krauss is rumored to be the product of a wealthy family, though their potential contributions to the purchase of the house remain unclear – as do hers. A spokeswoman for W. W. Norton, publisher of Ms. Krauss’s sophomore novel – “The History of Love,” to be released today – refused to disclose the author’s advance.

Regardless of how the couple paid for the property, it’s their literary labors generating the hype over the house. That’s unjust, in Mr. Siegel’s view.

“No one says, ‘This guy is a really bad lawyer, yet he has a really nice house,’ ” Mr. Siegel said. The criticism of Mr. Foer, he added, was part of a “really, really bad double standard.”

Mr. Siegel also said the size of the transaction might have troubled some writers, regardless of who the buyers were, insofar as it means “Brooklyn as a wild place for authors to be living in is coming to an end.”

Indeed, Mr. Foer’s purchase may be a landmark event in a real-estate boom that has been sowing hostility in those it has left behind, writers or not.

A Park Slope writer who says she was inside the residence, pre-Foers, during a house tour, Louise Crawford, said: “It’s hard for those of us living in our little apartments, with all of our envy, … feeling marginalized by this real-estate climate, to see anyone in that house.”

That envy is felt particularly keenly by longtime Park Slope residents who remember the neighborhood’s less glorious days. Ms. Keyishian, for one, said she has lived in Park Slope since 1991, “when you couldn’t park a 10-year-old Tercel without its getting broken into.”

“I remember when Park Slope was Park Schlep, where recent grads, gays ‘n’ lezzies who couldn’t yet afford the West Village, and biracial families lived funky lives and wore Guatemalan-patterned hoodie pullovers,” Ms. Keyishian wrote in an e-mail. “Now just look at us. Fannnncy.”