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. 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 Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, 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. In Paris, despite teaching at the American University for 14 years, he refused to master French, 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.”
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 1966 to 1968, and was a visiting professor in schools around the country, including Rice University in 1979 and Princeton University, from 1981 until 1986. From 1988 to 1989, Charyn was Visiting Distinguished Professor at the City College of New York.
From 1995 to 2008, Charyn taught film at American University of Paris, where he is Professor emeritus.
Literary Career more less
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."
One of Charyn’s most well-known protagonists is Isaac Sidel, a Jewish New York detective turned mayor, and the subject of ten novels, including Blue Eyes and The Good Policeman. Charyn’s brother, Harvey, a homicide detective with the NYPD, added authenticity to this popular series. In 1991, Charyn co-produced and co-wrote a TV pilot based on The Good Policemen, starring the late Ron Silver as Isaac Sidel. The Sidel books are currently being re-imagined as graphic novels in France.
Charyn's eight graphic novels were written with the very best European artists, including Jacques de Loustal and José Antonio Muñoz, winner of the 2007 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.
Charyn’s books have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Chinese and 11 other languages.
His personal papers are held by the Fales Library at New York University.
"The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" - W. W. Norton
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.” In the San Francisco Chronicle, the novel was called a “bodice-ripper.”
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.” 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.”
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.
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.”
"The Collagists"
In 2007 Charyn was asked by literary website Smyles and Fish, along with lifelong friend 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.
Fiction
Once upon a Droshky, McGraw-Hill, 1964
On the Darkening Green, McGraw-Hill, 1965
The Man Who Grew Younger, Harper & Row, 1967
Going To Jerusalem, Viking, 1967
American Scrapbook, Viking, 1969
Eisenhower, My Eisenhower, Holt, 1971
The Tar Baby, Holt, 1973
Blue Eyes, Simon & Schuster, 1975
Marilyn the Wild, Arbor House, 1976
The Education of Patrick Silver, Arbor House, 1976
The Franklin Scare, Arbor House, 1977
Secret Isaac, Arbor House, 1978
The Seventh Babe, Arbor House, 1979
The Catfish Man, Arbor House, 1980
Darlin’ Bill, Arbor House, 1980
Panna Maria, Arbor House, 1982
Pinocchio’s Nose, Arbor House, 1983
War Cries Over Avenue C, Donald I. Fine, 1985
Paradise Man, Donald I. Fine, 1987
The Good Policeman, Mysterious Press, 1990
Elsinore, Warner Books, 1991
Maria’s Girls, Warner Books, 1992
Back to Bataan, Farrar, Straus (for younger readers), 1993
Montezuma’s Man, Warner Books, 1993
Little Angel Street, Warner Books, 1995
El Bronx, Warner Books, 1997
Death of a Tango King, New York University Press, 1998
Captain Kidd, St. Martin’s Press, 1999
Hurricane Lady, Warner Books, 2001
The Isaac Quartet, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002
The Green Lantern, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004
Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution, Norton, 2008
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, Norton, 2010
Short Stories & Collections (Selected)
The Man Who Grew Younger and Other Stories, Harper, 1967
Family Man, art by Joe Staton, lettering by Ken Bruzenak, Paradox Press, 1995
"The Blue Book of Crime,” in The New Black Mask, Harcourt Brace, 1986"Fantomas in New York", in A Matter of Crime, Harcourt Brace, 1988
“Young Isaac,” in The Armchair Detective, 1990
“Lorelei” in Atlantic Monthly Summer Fiction Issue, Summer, 2010 [1]
“Silk & Silk” Narrative Magazine's Story of the Week, October, 2010 [2]
Non-Fiction
Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace and Magical Land, Putnam’s, 1986
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
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
Bronx Boy, St. Martin’s Press, 2002
Gangsters & Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003
Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel, Random House, 2005
Inside the Hornet’s Head: an anthology of Jewish American Writing, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005Raised by Wolves: The Turbulent Art and Times of Quentin Tarantino, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005
Marilyn: The Last Goddess [an illustrated biography of Marilyn Monroe], Abrams, 2008
Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, published by Yale University Press, American Icon series, due out in March, 2011
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)
