Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an American writer. 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, writing in multiple genres.[1]
Michael Chabon calls him "one of the most important writers in American literature".[2]New YorkNewsday hailed Charyn as "a contemporary AmericanBalzac",[3] and theLos Angeles Times described him as "absolutely unique among American writers".[4]
Charyn's first novel,Once Upon a Droshky, was published in 1964. WithBlue Eyes (1975), the debut of detective character Isaac Sidel, Charyn attracted wide attention and acclaim.[5] As of 2017, Charyn 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 namedNew York Times Book of the Year.[6] Charyn has been a finalist for thePEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Charyn was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Fiction, 1983. He received the Rosenthal Award from theAmerican 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 theAmerican University of Paris until 2009, when he retired from teaching.
In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournamenttable tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. NovelistDon DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis,Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong".[7]
Charyn was born in theBronx, New York City, to Sam and Fanny (Paley) Charyn. In order to escape its mean streets, Charyn immersed himself in comic books and cinema.[8] Books were scarce in the Charyn household, save for volume "A" of theBook of Knowledge. After becoming all too well versed in astronomy and aardvarks, Charyn hungered for more. He attendedThe High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, majoring in painting. Turning from painting to literature, Charyn enrolled atColumbia University, where he studied history and comparative literature with a focus on Russian literature, graduatingPhi Beta Kappa andcum laude (BA, 1959).
From 1962 through 1964, Charyn taught at his alma mater, Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, and atHigh School of Performing Arts, popularized in the movieFame.
Charyn serves on the advisory board of the Laboratoire d'Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA), a research centre atAix-Marseille University.[9]
Charyn often returns to his native Bronx in many of his writings, including a book appropriately namedEl Bronx.Michael Woolf, who wroteExploding the Genre: The Crime Fiction of Jerome Charyn, says of Charyn: "Of all the novelists characterized asJewish-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."[citation needed]
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, includingBlue Eyes andCitizen Sidel. Charyn became interested in writing a crime novel after discoveringRoss Macdonald'sThe Galton Case (1959). What impressed Charyn most was the narrative voice of sleuthLew Archer—at once sympathetic and detached, who "deliver[s] both a landscape and a past without least hint of sentimentality."[5] The experiences of Charyn's brother, Harvey, an NYPD homicide detective, added authenticity to this popular series, which attracted a cult following worldwide. After the limited success of his earlier works, Charyn considered publishing the first Sidel novel under what he described as theMarrano pen name of Joseph da Silva (i.e., to obscure hisJewish origins),[5] but was convinced by his agent to use his birth name.
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 starringRon Silver as The Good Policemen. More recently, in April 2012,Otto Penzler, founder ofMysterious Press, reissued the entire series as eBooks, co-published byOpen Road Media.[10] The October 2012, publication ofUnder 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 titledHard Apple.[11]
Charyn's eight graphic novels were teamed him up with artists likeJacques de Loustal,José Antonio Muñoz andFrançois Boucq, together with whom he won the 1998Angoulême 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.[8]
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.[12] He is represented by the literary agency headed byGeorges Borchardt.
The publication of his 2010 novelThe Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (W.W. Norton) stirred a great deal of controversy. Some critics felt that Charyn was much too brazen in writing in poetEmily 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".[13] In the San Francisco Chronicle, the novel was called a "bodice-ripper".[14]
Other critics saw the work as a magical tour de force.Joyce Carol Oates, writing inThe 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."[15] In the Globe and Mail, reviewerWilliam 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."[16]
InThe 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 theMassachusetts Center for the Book and selected as finalist for its annual book award in the fiction category.[17] The French edition of his novel, titledla vie secrète d'emily dickinson, was released byRivages in 2013,[18]
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."[19]
In 2007 Charyn was asked by the literary websiteSmyles and Fish, along with lifelong friend, novelistFrederic Tuten, to write an essay about their former colleague and friendDonald 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-chiefIris Smyles, Charyn's essay on Barthelme, and Tuten's pieceMy Autobiography: Portable with Images. The work also features photos of the three writers and their work, as well as quotes from Barthelme himself.[20]
Charyn has lived inGreenwich Village, the Bronx,San Francisco,Los Angeles,Palo Alto, California,Houston,Austin, Texas, Paris andBarcelona. 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."[22]
New York Cannibals, art by François Boucq, Casterman, 2020 (sequel toLittle Tulip)
Non-fiction
Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace and Magical Land, Putnam's, 1986
Translated and adapted into French by Cécile Bloc-Rodot –New York : Chronique d'une ville sauvage, coll.Découvertes Gallimard (nº 204), Paris: Gallimard, 1994 (also translated into Spanish, Italian, Korean and simplified Chinese, as translated from the French version)
Movieland: Hollywood and the Great American Dream Culture, Putnam's, 1989, New York University Press, 1996
The Dark Lady from Belorusse, St. Martin's Press, 1997
Hemingway : Portrait de l'artiste en guerrier blessé, coll.Découvertes Gallimard (nº 371), Paris: Gallimard, 1999
Trad. into traditional Chinese by Chʻên Li-chʻing –Hai Ming Wei: Shang hên lei lei tê wên hsüeh lao ping, collection "Fa hsien chih lü" (vol. 57), Taipei: China Times Publishing, 2001
The Black Swan, St. Martin's Press, 2000
Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001
Marilyn: The Last Goddess [an illustrated biography of Marilyn Monroe fromAbrams Discoveries series], Abrams, 2008
Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, Yale University Press, American Icon series, March 2011
A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century, Bellevue Literary Press, March 2016
Selected plays and documentaries
George (three-act play) developed at the Actors Studio, under Arthur Penn, staged readings at La Maison des Ecrivains (Paris 1988) and Ubu Repertory Theater (NY 1990)
Empire State Building, co-writer, semi-fictional documentary broadcast by Canal Plus, (France 2008)
As editor
Editor, The Single Voice: An Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. New York, Collier, 1969
Editor, The Troubled Vision: An Anthology of Contemporary Short Novels and Passages. New York, Collier, 1970
Editor, The New Mystery. New York, Dutton, 1993
About Jerome Charyn
Vallas, Sophie (2014).Conversations with Jerome Charyn. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.ISBN9781628460902.OCLC875056195.
Vallas, Sophie (2013).Jérome Charyn et les siens : autofictions. Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence.ISBN9782853998727.OCLC859437774.
The Review of Contemporary Fiction Summer 1992 issue, devoted to work of Charyn and José Donoso
Polar (Paris) summer 1995 issue, devoted to Jerome Charyn
Air France Magazine cover story on novelCitizen Sidel, August 1997
"Notes on the Rhetoric of Anti-Realist Fiction" by Albert Guerard, inTri-Quarterly (Evanston, Finding the MusicIllinois), Spring 1974
"Jerome Charyn: Artist as Mytholept" by Robert L. Patten, inNovel (Providence, Rhode Island), Fall, 1984
"Exploding the Genre: The Crime Fiction of Jerome Charyn" by Michael Woolf, inAmerican Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre Brian Docherty (ed.), New York, St. Martin's Press, 1988, p. 132 and p. 138.
Vallas, Sophie. "The Bronx in Short Trousers: Jerome Charyn's Mischievous Childhood Recollections in The Dark Lady from Belorusse", in Life Writing, Taylor & Francis Online (April 8, 2021).https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2021.1907890
Vallas Sophie, "La possibilité d'une île: la mythologie du Bronx, archipel enchanté, dans trois textes autobiographiques de Jerome Charyn", in Nathalie Cochoy et Sylvie Maurel (eds.): L'Art de la ville/ The Art of the City, Anglophonia/ Caliban (Université Toulouse-II-Le Mirail), n°25/2009, p. 75-85.
Vallas Sophie, "D'autres vies dans la mienne : l'écriture (auto)biographique de Jerome Charyn", in Joanny Moulin, Yannick Gouchan et Nguyen Phuong Ngoc, Études biographiques. La biographie au carrefour des humanités, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2018, 135–144.
Vallas Sophie, "Saturne et l'orphelin : les relations familiales dans le cycle Isaac Sidel de Jerome Charyn", in Sylvie Crinquand et Mélanie Joseph-Vilain (eds.), dossier "Le détective en famille", Textes & Contextes, 15–2, 2020.
Jerome Charyn's introduction toThe Isaac Quartet - Black Box edition of the first four Isaac Sidel books, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York and London, 2002
Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers
Exploding The Genre: The Crime Fiction of Jerome Charyn in American Crime Fiction, Ed. B. Doherty, St Martin's Press 1988
Neon Noir by Woody Haut, Chapter 6 "From Mean Streets to Dream Streets". Serpents Tail, 1999
Video onYouTube: Charyn discusses chaos and the Bronx, and ping-pong, which inspired his Isaac Sidel crime novel series; the 11th isUnder the Eye of God (Mysterious Press/Open Road Media, October 2012)
Video onYouTube: Charyn discusses Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe and his biographical studyJoe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil (Yale University Press, March 2011)
Video onYouTube: Charyn discusses Emily Dickinson and critical reaction to his novelThe Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (W. W. Norton, 2010). (TRT 3:09 min.)
Video: Charyn discusses Emily Dickinson at Harvard Bookstore, NPR Forum Network Free Lecture (March 2010)
Video onYouTube: Charyn discusses his youth in the Bronx, his love for Paris, and his novelJohnny One-Eye (W. W. Norton, 2008)
Video onYouTube: Director Naomi Gryn goes back to the Bronx with authors Jerome Charyn andFrederic Tuten (originally broadcast on Channel 4, BBC, 1993)
Official page: Charyn's novel "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson"
Official page: Charyn's Isaac Sidel detective/crime fiction series
Official page: Charyn's biography "Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil"
Official page: Charyn's novel "Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution"
Official page: Charyn's novel "I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War" (Liveright, 2014)
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