Heya Everyone! Let’s give a warm welcome to author Jerome Charyn! Yay! He’s here to chat about his latest book. The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and His Times. Also, check out the giveaway – scroll to the bottom for that.
What was the first major news story you remember as a child?
V-E Day, the victory in Europe. There were very few newspapers in the Bronx, but I think that headline grabbed me. I was old enough to know what it meant, but it really was almost like a kind of code. I knew it meant that the Germans had been defeated and would not show up secretly in the Bronx. But it was a much simpler world of heroes and villains. We had Hitler to mock. We don’t have that kind of poetic simplicity.
Is there a genre or literary niche that you feel hasn’t gotten its deserved amount of attention?
The historical novel as serious literature. I’m not sure there are many other writers who could have captured TR’s [Teddy Roosevelt’s] strange surreal cruel poetic voice. It’s not that easy to do in biographies, where the voice of your subject remains in the shadows, except when she or he is quoted directly. To turn Teddy Roosevelt into a kind of poet, is no simple matter.
Which now-dead author would you like to interview? What are some of the things you would chat about?
Shakespeare. I would want to know how the hell he wrote Hamlet. How he was able to create this kind of rhapsodic assassin. It is the only work I have ever really been jealous of. I would have liked to plagiarize Shakespeare and claim myself as the author of Hamlet – and then they can take me away to Bellevue.
Would you describe Teddy Roosevelt as a superhero? Why or Why Not?
I think we live in a cartoon world, with cartoon heroes and villains who have taken over the landscape, whether it’s Jack Ryan or Wonder Woman. But TR was the first president to impose the force of his personality upon the nation. In that sense, he had all the contour of a superhero.
The breadth of your work has crossed into many mediums: books, graphic novels, plays, etc. What’s next for your works? TV show or movie?
I hope to do an animated series based on my Isaac Sidel crime novels. I have already worked in live-action television, and somehow animation seems to yield its own magical humanity.
What are the top three historical time periods and locations would you like to visit?
None, because it would be too frightening to me. I would have loved to have met Lincoln, but that would have meant reliving the Civil War.
How has the world changed since Teddy Roosevelt’s time?
Not at all. We may have Twitter, Amazon, Alexa and Siri, but we have the same exact separation of wealth and poverty in a world where our resources are disappearing by the nanosecond.
If you could own a famous or historical art work, what would it be? Would you put it on public display or keep it privately?
I would have loved to have either owned or stolen any of van Gogh’s late paintings. I would look at it all day and share it with no one.
If you were asked to create the syllabus for a college class in U.S. history, what books would be on there as required reading? As passing discussion?
Any historical book by Doris Kearns Goodwin. She writes history with the eye and ear of a novelist.
If you could trade places with anyone (living or dead, real or fictional) for 1 day, who would it be and why?
I would like to have lived for one hour in van Gogh’s room in Auvers-sur-Oise and capture a tiny bit of his electricity.
100 years after his death, what would you say was Teddy Roosevelt’s greatest contribution?
His deep concern for animals and for the conservation of forests; his love of lakes and natural resources – they will all disappear very soon.
The most important word for TR was CONSERVATION – he wanted to conserve the wetlands and build bird sanctuaries – he believed in the aura of nature. He worked to keep as much parkland in America as he could. His god was the grizzly bear.
Tournament table tennis has been a part of your life. Do you still compete?
No; when I was competing, I had to train at least five hours every day, which meant I didn’t write a word. So maybe old age is a curious blessing. I still love to play someone who can recapture the speed of the ball.
Finally, what upcoming events and works would you like to share with the readers?
I’d love to do an opera on Emily Dickinson. And I need to find a composer who would be compatible with my own strange perception.
About Jerome Charyn
Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With more than 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life.
Since the 1964 release of Charyn’s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published thirty 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.
In addition to writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top ten percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn’s book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, “The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong.”
Charyn’s most recent novel, Jerzy, was described by The New Yorker as a “fictional fantasia” about the life of Jerzy Kosinski, the controversial author of The Painted Bird. In 2010, Charyn wrote The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, an imagined autobiography of the renowned poet, a book characterized by Joyce Carol Oates as a “fever-dream picaresque.”
Charyn lives in New York City. He’s currently working with artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka on an animated television series based on his Isaac Sidel crime novels.
Website ~ GoodReads ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Amazon ~ Audible
The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and His Times
Raising the literary bar to a new level, Jerome Charyn re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon- to-be twenty-sixth president through his derring-do adventures, effortlessly combining superhero dialogue with haunting pathos. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley’s assassination, the novel positions Roosevelt as a “perfect bull in a china shop,” a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president.
With an operatic cast, including “Bamie,” his handicapped older sister; Eleanor, his gawky little niece; as well as the devoted Rough Riders, the novel memorably features the lovable mountain lion Josephine, who helped train Roosevelt for his “crowded hour,” the charge up San Juan Hill. Lauded by Jonathan Lethem for his “polymorphous imagination and crack comic timing,” Charyn has created a classic of historical fiction, confirming his place as “one of the most important writers in American literature” (Michael Chabon).
I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War
Since publishing his first novel in 1964, Jerome Charyn has established himself as one of the most inventive and prolific literary chroniclers of the American landscape. Here in I Am Abraham, Charyn returns with an unforgettable portrait of Lincoln and the Civil War. Narrated boldly in the first person, I Am Abraham effortlessly mixes humor with Shakespearean-like tragedy, in the process creating an achingly human portrait of our sixteenth President.
Tracing the historic arc of Lincoln’s life from his picaresque days as a gangly young lawyer in Sangamon County, Illinois, through his improbable marriage to Kentucky belle Mary Todd, to his 1865 visit to war-shattered Richmond only days before his assassination, I Am Abraham hews closely to the familiar Lincoln saga. Charyn seamlessly braids historical figures such as Mrs. Keckley—the former slave, who became the First Lady’s dressmaker and confidante—and the swaggering and almost treasonous General McClellan with a parade of fictional extras: wise-cracking knaves, conniving hangers-on, speculators, scheming Senators, and even patriotic whores.
We encounter the renegade Rebel soldiers who flanked the District in tattered uniforms and cardboard shoes, living in a no-man’s-land between North and South; as well as the Northern deserters, young men all, with sunken, hollowed faces, sitting in the punishing sun, waiting for their rendezvous with the firing squad; and the black recruits, whom Lincoln’s own generals wanted to discard, but who play a pivotal role in winning the Civil War. At the center of this grand pageant is always Lincoln himself, clad in a green shawl, pacing the White House halls in the darkest hours of America’s bloodiest war.
Using biblically cadenced prose, cornpone nineteenth-century humor, and Lincoln’s own letters and speeches, Charyn concocts a profoundly moral but troubled commander in chief, whose relationship with his Ophelia-like wife and 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.
GIVEAWAY!!!
Jerome Charyn is offering up 1 paperbook copy of I Am Abraham and also The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King to a single winner. Do the Rafflecopter thing below or answer these questions in the comments: 1) What is one of your favorite historical fiction novels? 2) Where do you live? 3) Leave a way to contact you (email, twitter, etc.) in case you win. This giveaway limited to USA, Canada, or the UK due to shipping costs. Giveaway ends February 22, 2019, midnight.
Everyone, please give a warm welcome to 
Which ancient or historical works have you not read and periodically kick yourself for not having made time for them yet?
Places to Find Colin Falconer
Colin Falconer is an internationally best-selling author. Born in London, he was a freelance journalist and advertising copywriter for many years. But writing novels was his passion and led him to write his first book, Venom, based on his own experiences in South East Asia. 
