Recensori in anteprima

A lyrical autobiography in essays from a celebrated author, honoring outlier artists and other heroes and villains who inspired him “With his customary linguistic verve and pulsing imagination, Jerome Charyn serves up here some of the tastiest essay writing available. He knows and loves New York past and present, and he draws on a lifetime of raucous experience and dedicated reading for a rich, heady, satisfying brew.” —Philip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay and author of A Mother’s Tale “Deeply personal. . . . Readers will delight in encountering Charyn’s New York City. . . . From his ruminations on seeing classic studio-era films during his South Bronx childhood in the 1940s and ’50s to an account of a day spent with Mayor Ed Koch in the mid-’80s, Charyn’s prose enchants.” —Publishers Weekly “Lively essays. . . . A very personal view of the past artfully brought to vivid life.” —Kirkus Reviews In the New York Review of Books, Joyce Carol Oates expressed her admiration for an equally prolific contemporary: “Among Charyn’s writerly gifts is a dazzling energy. . . . [He is] an exuberant chronicler of the mythos of American life”; the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.” In these ten essays, Charyn shares personal stories about places steeped in history and myth, including his beloved New York, and larger-than-life personalities from the Bible and from the worlds of film, literature, politics, sports, and the author’s own family. Together, writes Charyn, these essays create “my own lyrical autobiography.”