Suttree’ is a fat one, a book with rude, startling power and a flood of talk. Much of it takes place on the Tennessee River, and Cormac McCarthy, who has written ‘The Orchard Keeper’ and other novels, gives us a sense of river life that reads like a doomed ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ Jerome Charyn Read Quote
Lincoln prevailed: wearing his green shawl in the White House and gripped with melancholy, his feet constantly cold, he preserved a nation that had begun to unravel, often holding it together with nothing more than the flat of his hand and his unfaltering sense of human worth. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
I believe in monstrosities, and ‘I Am Abraham’ is a monstrosity of sorts, raveling out moment by moment with its contrapuntal songs, as if a band of musicians were at play, all of them with Lincoln’s beard and disturbing grey eyes. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
I dreamed my way into Lincoln and the details that moved me – his lack of education or ‘civilized’ manners and his deep connection to all humankind. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
It was difficult to find my way into ‘I Am Abraham,’ to feel confident enough to inhabit Lincoln’s persona. I began with a prologue in a neutral voice, wrote of Lincoln at the White House with a sly young reporter quizzing him about his humble origins. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
Many of the writers I admire – Melville, Dickinson, Kafka – were virtually invisible during their lifetimes. Art, I think, often has to dance around in the void. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
What I find curious is that I ever became a writer at all. I grew up in the South Bronx, the land of poverty and petty hoodlums. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
Compared with my brother, I always felt like Richard III, some clever humpbacked thing who surpassed him in the end. He was the one who read books, but I became the writer. He painted and drew, but I was the one who got accepted by the High School of Music and Art. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
Some readers may be disturbed that I wrote ‘The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson’ in Emily’s own voice. I wasn’t trying to steal her thunder or her music. I simply wanted to imagine my way into the head and heart of Emily Dickinson. Jerome Charyn Read Quote
