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A spy navigates the labyrinthine horrors of Nazi Germany, on a mission to save the woman he loves “Charyn’s blunt, brilliantly crafted prose bubbles with the pleasure of nailing life to the page in just the right words. . . . [Cesare is] provocative, stimulating and deeply satisfying.” —Washington Post On a windy night in 1937, a seventeen-year-old German naval sub-cadet is wandering along the seawall when he stumbles upon a gang of ruffians beating up a tramp, whose life he saves. The man is none other than spymaster Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, German military intelligence. Canaris adopts the young man and dubs him “Cesare” after the character in the silent film The Ca...
"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.
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 ...
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 Gu...
The writer recalls his youth in the Bronx and his mother, Faigele, a beautiful immigrant from Russia
The author of numerous books about New York celebrates the personalities and celebrities who made the city famous during the Jazz era, including Mae West, Fanny Brice, Irving Berlin, Legs Diamond, Scott Fitzgerald, Arnold Rothstein, and many others. Reprint.
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.
DIVPolice commissioner Isaac Sidel struggles to keep the New York Police Department from shattering/divDIV/divDIVWhen he was the police commissioner’s first deputy, Isaac Sidel was one of the most powerful men in New York. But now that he’s been promoted to the top job, there’s nothing for Sidel to do but stare at his desk and feed the tapeworm that’s attached to his stomach./divDIV /divDIVThe Justice Department sends him on a lecture tour of the country, but after one too many lunches with small-town mayors, Sidel goes AWOL and comes back to New York, getting in touch with the Ivanhoes, his illegal network of secret informants. A missing mob lawyer, a baseball-obsessed orphan genius, and a mysterious Romanian princess point towards a mystery that only he can tackle. Justice wants him back on tour, but something is rumbling beneath the city, and Sidel needs to be there to see it explode./div
Four detective novels include Blue Eyes, which introduces steadfast police inspector Isaac Sidel; Marilyn the Wild, in which Sidel confronts a commissioner's hot-headed daughter; The Education of Patrick Silver, in which a giant Irishman helps Sidel's war with Peruvian pimps; and Secret Isaac, in which Isaac travels to Ireland. Reprint.
Cast in the form of a ribald parody of a literary quarterly--including such magazine paraphernalia as ads and letters to the editor--the novel is populated by an array of brawling academics and earthy townies.