Jerome Charyn

Jerome Charyn

Jerome Charyn
Born (1937-05-13) 13 May 1937
Bronx, New York
Occupation Novelist, playwright, editor, film critic, professor and author of short stories, essays and non-fiction works
Nationality American
Period 1963-present
Notable awards 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
2002 Commander of Arts and Letters (Commandeur, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) France
1981 Rosenthal Award in Fiction - American Academy of Arts and Letters

Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an American author. With nearly 50 published works over a 50-year span, Charyn has a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life.[1] Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.” [2]

New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,”[3] and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”[4]

Since the 1964 release of Charyn’s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 37 novels, three memoirs, nine graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year.[5] Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Charyn was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Fiction, 1983. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letter (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Minister of Culture.

Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until 2009, when he retired from teaching.

In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn’s book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong."[6]

Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.

Biography

Early life

Charyn was born in the Bronx to Sam and Fanny (Paley) Charyn. In order to escape its mean streets, Charyn immersed himself in comic books and cinema.[7] Books were scarce in the Charyn household, save for volume “A” of the Book of Knowledge. After becoming all too well versed in astronomy and aardvarks, Charyn hungered for more. He attended The High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, majoring in painting. Turning from painting to literature, Charyn enrolled at Columbia University, where he studied history and comparative literature with a focus on Russian literature, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude (BA, 1959).

Later life

Charyn has left footprints all over the globe, living in Greenwich Village, the Bronx, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, California, Houston, Austin, Texas, Paris and Barcelona. He currently divides his time between New York and Paris. During 14 years living in Paris and teaching at the American University, he resisted mastering the French language, fearful of its effect on “the rhythm [of my native speech], even though French words creep into your vocabulary. I don't want my music interfered with.”[8]

In 1968, Charyn joined Noam Chomsky, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, Thomas Pynchon, Henry Miller, James Baldwin and more than 400 others in signing the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[9]

Teaching career

From 1962 through 1964, Charyn taught at his alma mater, Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art, and at High School of Performing Arts, popularized in the movie Fame.

Charyn lectured in English at the City College of New York in 1965. He was assistant professor of English at Stanford University from 1965 to 1968. He served as a visiting professor in colleges across the country, including Rice University in 1979 and Princeton University, from 1981 until 1986. From 1988 to 1989, Charyn was Distinguished Professor at the City College of New York.

From 1995 to 2008, Charyn taught film at American University of Paris, where he is Distinguished Professor emeritus.

Literary career

Charyn often returns to his native Bronx in many of his writings, including a book appropriately named El Bronx. Michael Woolf, who wrote Exploding the Genre: The Crime Fiction of Jerome Charyn, says of Charyn: “Of all the novelists characterized as Jewish-American, Charyn is the most radical and inventive. There is in the body of his work a restless creativity which constantly surprises and repeatedly undermines the reader's expectation."[10]

One of Charyn’s best-known protagonists is Isaac Sidel, a Jewish New York police detective turned mayor, who is the subject of eleven crime novels, including Blue Eyes and Citizen Sidel. The experiences of Charyn’s brother, Harvey, an NYPD homicide detective, added authenticity to this popular series, which attracted a cult following worldwide. The ten books were translated into seven languages and remained in print for three decades. In 1991, Charyn co-produced and co-wrote a TV pilot starring Ron Silver as The Good Policemen. More recently, in April, 2012, Otto Penzler, founder of Mysterious Press, reissued the entire series as eBooks, co-published by Open Road Media.[11] The October, 2012, publication of Under the Eye of God, the first new Sidel thriller in a decade, rebooted the series ahead of a planned adult animated TV drama, to be titled Hard Apple.[12]

Charyn's eight graphic novels were written with the very best European artists, including Jacques de Loustal, José Antonio Muñoz and François Boucq, together with whom he won the 1998 Angoulême Grand Prix. Much of his writing in this genre was influenced by the comic books he devoured as a child. Charyn himself says comic books helped him learn to read.[7]

Charyn's books have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Chinese and 11 other languages. Charyn served as judge for the 2011 National Book Awards in Fiction.[13] He is represented by the literary agency headed by Georges Borchardt.

Charyn's personal papers are held by the Fales Library at New York University.

"The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" – W. W. Norton, 2010

The publication of this novel stirred a great deal of controversy. Some critics felt that Charyn was much too brazen in writing in Emily Dickinson’s voice and surrounding her with invented characters. The New York Times said this “fits neatly into the flourishing genre of literary body-snatching.”[14] In the San Francisco Chronicle, the novel was called a “bodice-ripper.”[15]

Other critics saw the work as a magical tour de force. Joyce Carol Oates, writing in The New York Review of Books, said: “Of literary sleights of hand none is more exhilarating for the writer, as none is likely to be riskier, than the appropriation of another—classic—writer’s voice.”[16] In the Globe and Mail, reviewer William Kowalski wrote: “I had hoped that there was someone like Dickinson out there. My one regret, after finding her, was that I would never get to make her acquaintance. No doubt millions of others feel the same. It’s for us that Jerome Charyn has written this book.”[17]

In The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, Charyn attempts to bring America’s greatest female poet to life by transforming himself into Emily Dickinson. Assuming her voice, he narrates Dickinson’s “secret life” to the reader, delving into her childhood, romantic involvements, even her final illness and death.

On May 1, 2011, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson was named a "Must-Read" book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and selected as finalist for its annual book award in the fiction category.[18] The French edition of his novel, titled la vie secrète d'emily dickinson, was released by Rivages in 2013,[19]

Charyn says he drew inspiration for his novel from Emily Dickinson’s letters and poems. He says of Dickinson: “I am fascinated by her writing and the kind of power she had. Where it came from, I don't think we'll ever know.”[20]

"The Collagists"

In 2007 Charyn was asked by literary website Smyles and Fish, along with lifelong friend, novelist Frederic Tuten, to write an essay about their former colleague and friend Donald Barthelme. The project evolved into a lengthy article, which offers a sort of collage of these three writers and the world of their influences. The work is divided into three parts - an introductory essay on the project by editor-in-chief Iris Smyles, Charyn's essay on Barthelme, and Tuten's piece My Autobiography: Portable with Images. The work also features photos of the three writers and their work, as well as quotes from Barthelme himself.[21]

Fiction

Short stories and collections (selected)

Non-fiction

Selected plays and documentaries

Editor

Publications about Jerome Charyn

Honors

Literary archives

Notes

  1. ↑ "I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War" Norton Books online, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Review of The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" Norton Books online, 2010.
  3. ↑ "Bloomsbury" Bloomsbury online, 2010.
  4. ↑ "Bloomsbury" Bloomsbury Publishing online, 2010.
  5. ↑ "NYT Book of the Year" New York Times Book of the Year online, 2010.
  6. ↑ "They Also Serve" The Observer online, July 21, 2002.
  7. 1 2 "BOMB" Frederic Tuten, BOMB Magazine online, Fall 2004.
  8. ↑ "The Bronx—much thonks" Kera Bolonik, Bookforum online, Feb/Mar 2008.
  9. ↑ “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post
  10. ↑ "Biography of Jerome Charyn" Michael Woolf, Biography online, 2010.
  11. ↑ "Open Road Media/Mysterious Press Jerome Charyn Author's Page"
  12. ↑ "Tropical Topix" - December 6, 2010
  13. ↑ "2011 National Book Awards"
  14. ↑ "The Rose Did Caper on Her Cheek" Caryn James, New York Times Book Reviews online, February 16, 2010.
  15. ↑ "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" Jane Juska, San Francisco Chronicle online, February 2, 2010.
  16. ↑ "Ardor in Amherst" Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books online, 2010.
  17. ↑ "Post Emily" William Kowalski, Globe and Mail online, April 1, 2010.
  18. ↑ "Massachusetts Center for the Book" May 1, 2011
  19. ↑ "la vie secrète d'emily dickinson" decitre.fr
  20. ↑ "The Bronx—much thonks" Kera Bolonik, Bookforum online, 2010
  21. ↑ "The Collagists" Smyles & Fish online, 2010.

References

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