1.
What are your thoughts on the explosion of popularity
concerning the YA genre?
I think it might very well be that
it started with Harry Potter, that young adult
writers are trying to tell good stories and adults have moved into that kind of
dream.
2.
You are the master of writing across a realm of different
genres, what excites you about connecting with different audiences?
I’m
not so sure that these are different audiences, I think we all love stories,
whether we’re children or great-grandfathers and when you move from genre to genre you
are still telling a story like Scheherazade and the king is always waiting for
the next tale.
3.
Your writing is so precise, yet evocative - how do you work
at crafting your unique style of prose?
Everything
begins and ends with the word, with the music of the sentence and as Tolstoy
once said, “I’m always composing.”
4.
Being a published author for nearly 50 years, what do you
think of eBooks?
I
think that this is a kind of logical step as we move from the internet into
eBooks.
Publishing
is changing even as we speak. I think there now will be a more complicated
dance between the eBook and the printed book, and as we’ve seen recently,
successes in eBooks allow the author to move into print.
5.
What would be your
advice to young people who aspire to a literary career?
It’s
not worth the money – only write if you’re absolutely in love with it.
6.
How much of your life is in Back
to Bataan? How did you personally experience New York during World
War II?
I
think so much of the source of my writing comes from my childhood, I grew up
during the War - so many of the terrors
and the magic of certain films have remained with me. And all of this appears in the character of
Jack.
7.
Your older brother was a detective. Did your experiences
with him influence the plot?
Not
really, I think all writing is crime writing. And Back to
Bataan is a crime novel with a very original twist.
8.
Why did you decide to include the fascination with the
famous as a theme - Gary Cooper, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc.?
These
people were heroes to me as a child, particularly Eleanor Roosevelt, who was
one of the most extraordinary women who ever lived, and of course as a child I
fell in love with Gary Cooper’s face and with his very slow drawl, that seemed
so exotic to me. (I totally love Eleanor Roosevelt, too--she was an amazing lady!)
9.
Jack finds acclaim through his writing, yet feels guilty for
exploiting other people (Mrs. Fink). How does a writer starting out work to
bridge this gap?
You’re
always cannibalizing other people and writers when you start to write, so it’s
natural that Jack should be a young cannibal.
1. How important is the New York Times in your own life? Why did
you decide to make it a form of connection between Jack and the Leader?
As
a child, I didn’t even know that the Times existed –
I grew up in a neighborhood without newspapers and books, so that when I first
fell upon the New York Times, I was very very
greedy, and wanted to include it in Jack’s middle-class life.
New York City, 1943. War is raging in Europe and the Pacific, while Jack Dalton is stuck attending Dutch Masters Day School. What Jack really wants is to enlist in the army, to fight...
Everything changes when Coco, Jack's "fiancee," throws him over for one of his classmates. Jack sees red and does something drastic. Then he runs away. Hiding out in a nearby park, Jack joins ranks with a group of vagrants and is soon under the sway of a man called the Leader, an ex-convict who is as articulate and charismatic as he is dangerous. The Leader turns Jack's world upside down. To put things right, Jack must prove himself a braver soldier than he ever imagined.
Everything changes when Coco, Jack's "fiancee," throws him over for one of his classmates. Jack sees red and does something drastic. Then he runs away. Hiding out in a nearby park, Jack joins ranks with a group of vagrants and is soon under the sway of a man called the Leader, an ex-convict who is as articulate and charismatic as he is dangerous. The Leader turns Jack's world upside down. To put things right, Jack must prove himself a braver soldier than he ever imagined.
Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.”
New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,” and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”
Since 1964, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight 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. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.
Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.
New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,” and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”
Since 1964, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight 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. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.
Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.
eBook
ISBN: 9780985792206
ISBN: 9781476119076
Pages: 98
Release: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 9780985792206
ISBN: 9781476119076
Pages: 98
Release: July 1, 2012
Kindle buy link - $2.99
Nook buy link - $4.95iBookstore buy link - $4.99Google buy link - $3.79
Smashwords buy link - $4.99
PDF buy link - $4.95
