Download or read book Conversations with Jerome Charyn written by Sophie Vallas and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of fourteen interviews covers the prolific and rich career of author Jerome Charyn (b. 1937). Four of the interviews appear in English for the first time, and two interviews appear here in print for the first time as well. As one of his autobiographical volumes claims, Jerome Charyn is a “Bronx Boy,” a child born from immigrant parents who went through Ellis Island in the 1920s like so many other travelers without luggage, a “little werewolf” who grew up on his own in the chaos of the Bronx ghetto. “I think I was defined by two things: World War II and the movies.” His work remains deeply marked by this childhood largely forgotten by the American Dream. If Charyn has spent much of his life in Paris, he has paradoxically never left the Bronx: “‘El Bronx’ is there inside my head, and I revisit it the way Hemingway would fish the Big Two-Hearted River in his dreams.” His whole work is a long attempt at evoking his own history and celebrating his lifelong marveling at the power of language—“our second skin”—as well as his deep, unflinching belief in the promises of fiction. Since 1964, Charyn has published more than fifty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction and including short stories; very popular crime novels; graphic novels cowritten with European artists; essays on American culture and cinema as well as on New York; autobiography; and biography—an ever-changing production that has made it difficult for critics to classify him. And yet in many ways Charyn's writing thrives on constant currents: the words “voice,” “song,” “undersong,” or “rhythm” return frequently in his interviews as he explains what literature is to him and ceaselessly asserts that he is trying “to find a music for a musicless world,” a language for “people who cannot speak.”
Download or read book The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson A Novel written by Jerome Charyn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-02-14 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this brilliant and hilarious jailbreak of a novel, Charyn channels the genius poet and her great leaps of the imagination." —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) Jerome Charyn, "one of the most important writers in American literature" (Michael Chabon), continues his exploration of American history through fiction with The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, hailed by prize-winning literary historian Brenda Wineapple as a "breathtaking high-wire act of ventriloquism." Channeling the devilish rhythms and ghosts of a seemingly buried literary past, Charyn removes the mysterious veils that have long enshrouded Dickinson, revealing her passions, inner turmoil, and powerful sexuality. The novel, daringly written in first person, begins in the snow. It's 1848, and Emily is a student at Mount Holyoke, with its mournful headmistress and strict, strict rules. Inspired by her letters and poetry, Charyn goes on to capture the occasionally comic, always fevered, ultimately tragic story of her life-from defiant Holyoke seminarian to dying recluse.
Download or read book Sergeant Salinger written by Jerome Charyn and published by Bellevue Literary Press. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shattering biographical novel of J.D. Salinger in combat “Charyn skillfully breathes life into historical icons.” —New Yorker J.D. Salinger, mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye, is remembered today as a reclusive misanthrope. Jerome Charyn’s Salinger is a young American WWII draftee assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, a band of secret soldiers who trained with the British. A rifleman and an interrogator, he witnessed all the horrors of the war—from the landing on D-Day to the relentless hand-to-hand combat in the hedgerows of Normandy, to the Battle of the Bulge, and finally to the first Allied entry into a Bavarian death camp, where corpses were piled like cordwood. After the war, interned in a Nuremberg psychiatric clinic, Salinger became enchanted with a suspected Nazi informant. They married, but not long after he brought her home to New York, the marriage collapsed. Maladjusted to civilian life, he lived like a “spook,” with invisible stripes on his shoulder, the ghosts of the murdered inside his head, and stories to tell. Grounded in biographical fact and reimagined as only Charyn could, Sergeant Salinger is an astonishing portrait of a devastated young man on his way to becoming the mythical figure behind a novel that has marked generations. Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin. He lives in New York.
Download or read book A Loaded Gun written by Jerome Charyn and published by Bellevue Literary Press. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PEN/ Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Longlist O, The Oprah Magazine “Best Books of Summer” selection “Magnetic nonfiction.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Remarkable insight . . . [a] unique meditation/investigation. . . . Jerome Charyn the unpredictable, elusive, and enigmatic is a natural match for Emily Dickinson, the quintessence of these.” —Joyce Carol Oates, author of Wild Nights! and The Lost Landscape We think we know Emily Dickinson: the Belle of Amherst, virginal, reclusive, and possibly mad. But in A Loaded Gun, Jerome Charyn introduces us to a different Emily Dickinson: the fierce, brilliant, and sexually charged poet who wrote: My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun— … Though I than He— may longer live He longer must—than I— For I have but the power to kill, Without—the power to die— Through interviews with contemporary scholars, close readings of Dickinson’s correspondence and handwritten manuscripts, and a suggestive, newly discovered photograph that is purported to show Dickinson with her lover, Charyn’s literary sleuthing reveals the great poet in ways that have only been hinted at previously: as a woman who was deeply philosophical, intensely engaged with the world, attracted to members of both sexes, and able to write poetry that disturbs and delights us today. Jerome Charyn is the author of, most recently, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories, I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War, and The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel. He lives in New York.
Download or read book Joe Dimaggio written by Jerome Charyn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the life of the baseball player in a new light, as a man who took his marriage to Marilyn Monroe very seriously long after their divorce, and had trouble finding a new role for himself during his retirement from the sport.
Download or read book Johnny One Eye A Tale of the American Revolution written by Jerome Charyn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-02-17 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A rollicking tale."—Stacy Schiff, New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice Johnny One-Eye is bringing about the rediscovery of one of the most "singular and remarkable [careers] in American literature" (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World). In this picaresque tour de force that reanimates Revolutionary Manhattan through the story of double agent John Stocking, the bastard son of a whorehouse madam and possibly George Washington, Jerome Charyn has given us one of the most memorable historical novels in years. As Johnny seeks to unlock the mystery of his birth and grapples with his allegiances, he falls in love with Clara, a gorgeous, green-eyed octoroon, the most coveted harlot of Gertrude's house. The wild parade of characters he encounters includes Benedict Arnold, the Howe brothers, "Sir Billy" and "Black Dick," and a manipulative Alexander Hamilton.Not since John Barth's The Sotweed Factor and Gore Vidal's Burr has a novel so dramatically re-created America's historical beginnings. Reading group guide included.
Download or read book Little Tulip written by Jerome Charyn and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A serial killer haunts the city streets, a stalker of isolated women who leaves a Santa Claus hat at the scene of his crimes. Pavel, a Russian émigré, assists the police investigation as a sketch artist. But Pavel's true calling is as a tattoo artist, and the so-called Bad Santa killings conjure up memories of the nightmarish world in which he learned his craft: a Russian prison camp that shattered his childhood and destroyed his family. Shifting between the living hell of a 1940s Siberian gulag and the crime-ridden chaos of New York City during the 1970s, this graphic novel's stunning artwork provides an atmospheric backdrop to its tale of corruption, murder, and revenge. Author Jerome Charyn was acclaimed by The New York Review of Books as "a fearless writer. Brave and brazen." This edition of Little Tulip, which was originally published in French, features Charyn's new English translation. Award-winning illustrator François Boucq also collaborated with Charyn on the acclaimed graphic novels The Magician's Wife and Billy Budd, KGB. Suggested for mature readers.
Download or read book I Am Abraham written by Jerome Charyn and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jerome Charyn’s “daring” and “memorable” (The New Yorker) historical novel renders the inner life of our sixteenth president like never before. This unforgettable portrait of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War effortlessly mixes humor with Shakespearean-like tragedy to create an achingly human portrait of the sixteenth president. Charyn conducts an orchestra of historical figures and fictional extras centered around a profoundly moral but troubled commander in chief whose relationship with his Ophelia-like wife and his sons—Robert, Willie, and Tad—is explored with penetrating psychological insight and the utmost compassion. Seized by melancholy and imbued with an unfaltering sense of human worth, Charyn’s President Lincoln comes to vibrant, three-dimensional life in a haunting portrait we have rarely seen in historical fiction.
Download or read book Sizzling Chops Devilish Spins written by Jerome Charyn and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Box Man written by Kobo Abe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-12-14 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kobo Abe, the internationally acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes, combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett. In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity. Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.
Download or read book New York Sketchbook written by Jerome Charyn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-11-29 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In time for the holidays comes this innovative exploration of America's biggest, and most exciting metropolis. In sketch and water color, Fabrice Moireau captures the dizzying heights, steep canyons and teeming multitudes of the Big Apple.
Download or read book Flight to Canada written by Ishmael Reed and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVIshmael Reed’s parody of slave narratives—the classical literature of the African American tradition—which redefined the neo-slave genre and launched a lucrative academic industry/divDIV Some parodies are as necessary as the books they answer. Such is the case with Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed’s scathing, offbeat response to conventional anti-slavery novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Though Flight to Canada has been classified by some as a “post race” novel, the villains and the heroes are clear./divDIV /divDIVThree slaves are on the run from the Swille plantation. Among them, the most hotly pursued is Raven Quickskill, a poet who seeks freedom in Canada, and ultimately hopes to return and liberate others. But this particular Civil War–era landscape is littered with modern elements, from Xerox copiers to airplanes, and freely reimagines historic figures as sacred as Abraham Lincoln. A comedy flashing with insight, Flight to Canada poses serious questions about history and the complex ways that race relations in America are shaped by the past. /divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Ishmael Reed including rare images of the author./div
Download or read book The Orchard written by David Hopen and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST. “Powerful and stirring, like a 2020 Jewish version of The Catcher in the Rye.” —Good Morning America A Recommended Book from: The New York Times * Good Morning America * Entertainment Weekly * Electric Literature * The New York Post * Alma * The Millions * Book Riot A commanding debut and a poignant coming-of-age story about a devout Jewish high school student whose plunge into the secularized world threatens everything he knows of himself. Ari Eden’s life has always been governed by strict rules. In ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, his days are dedicated to intense study and religious rituals, and adolescence feels profoundly lonely. So when his family announces that they are moving to a glitzy Miami suburb, Ari seizes his unexpected chance for reinvention. Enrolling in an opulent Jewish academy, Ari is stunned by his peers’ dizzying wealth, ambition, and shameless pursuit of life’s pleasures. When the academy’s golden boy, Noah, takes Ari under his wing, Ari finds himself entangled in the school’s most exclusive and wayward group. These friends are magnetic and defiant—especially Evan, the brooding genius of the bunch, still living in the shadow of his mother’s death. Influenced by their charismatic rabbi, the group begins testing their religion in unconventional ways. Soon Ari and his friends are pushing moral boundaries and careening toward a perilous future—one in which the traditions of their faith are repurposed to mysterious, tragic ends. Mesmerizing and playful, heartrending and darkly romantic, The Orchard probes the conflicting forces that determine who we become: the heady relationships of youth, the allure of greatness, the doctrines we inherit, and our concealed desires.
Download or read book Bronx Boy written by Jerome Charyn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-04-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Still known as "Baby", although a younger brother has come along, young Charyn makes pocket money delivering eggs, belongs to a group of twelve-year-old wannabe gangsters who meet in a soda shop run by an ex-con, and spends afternoons telling stories to the adoring wife of a wealthy Russian emigre. He becomes famous for his black-and-tans - a concoction of coffee ice cream, seltzer, milk, chocolate sauce, crushed pecans, and "a touch of bitterness that may have been the Bronx". So famous, indeed, that he walks away the winner of an annual black-and-tan contest sponsored by the real-life top gangster, called "The Little Man", Meyer Lansky."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Flights written by Olga Tokarczuk and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx) "A magnificent writer." — Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time "A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." — Washington Post From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
Download or read book Shards written by Ismet Prcic and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book: “Brilliant . . . With verbal glee, Prcic serves up a darkly comic vision of the terrors and misunderstandings of immigration” (Shelf Awareness). Ismet Prcic’s brilliant, provocative, and energetic debut novel is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California. He is advised that in order to make peace with the corrosive guilt he harbors over leaving his family behind, he must “write everything.” The result is a great rattlebag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet’s childhood in Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. As Ismet’s foothold in the present falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young man—real or imagined—named Mustafa, who joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa’s story begins to overshadow Ismet’s new-world identity, the reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one living it. Shards is a thrilling read—a harrowing war story, a stunningly inventive coming of age, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family. “Fierce, funny and real, it also says much about war, exile, guilt and fear.” —Chicago Sun-Times, Favorite Books of 2011
Download or read book Just Kids From the Bronx written by Arlene Alda and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A down-to-earth, inspiring book about the American promise fulfilled." —President Bill Clinton "Fascinating . . . . Made me wish I had been born in the Bronx." —Barbara Walters A touching and provocative collection of memories that evoke the history of one of America's most influential boroughs—the Bronx—through some of its many success stories The vivid oral histories in Arlene Alda's Just Kids from the Bronx reveal what it was like to grow up in the place that bred the influencers in just about every field of endeavor today. The Bronx is where Michael Kay, the New York Yankees' play-by-play broadcaster, first experienced baseball, where J. Crew's CEO Millard (Mickey) Drexler found his ambition, where Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dava Sobel fell in love with science early on and where music-making inspired hip hop's Grandmaster Melle Mel to change the world of music forever. The parks, the pick-up games, the tough and tender mothers, the politics, the gangs, the food—for people who grew up in the Bronx, childhood recollections are fresh. Arlene Alda's own Bronx memories were a jumping-off point from which to reminisce with a nun, a police officer, an urban planner, and with Al Pacino, Mary Higgins Clark, Carl Reiner, Colin Powell, Maira Kalman, Bobby Bonilla, and many other leading artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs—experiences spanning six decades of Bronx living. Alda then arranged these pieces of the past, from looking for violets along the banks of the Bronx River to the wake-up calls from teachers who recognized potential, into one great collective story, a film-like portrait of the Bronx from the early twentieth century until today.
