In the Shadow of King Saul: Essays on Silence and Song; Jerzy: A Novel; and A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century. Among other honors, his work has been longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and PEN Award for Biography, shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, and selected as a finalist for the Firecracker Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Charyn has also been named a Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture and received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York.
Charyn applied the Page 69 Test to Ravage & Son and reported the following:
Turning to the top of page 69, you get right into it:Learn more about the book and author at Jerome Charyn's website.“A madman on the prowl, and you intend to catch him, Herr Detective? What does he look like?”This page – page 69 – deals with the essential dilemma of the book – a madman on the prowl, ripping up prostitutes with the silver wolf’s head of his cane. Our hero, Ben Ravage, searches for this Jewish ‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ and realizes that it is someone very close to him.
Lionel was baiting him, but Ben didn’t care. He invented his own portrait of the ripper.
“Some say he’s dark. Others say he has straw hair – like you.”
The roof garden turned silent. Marcus began to twitch. He snarled at Ben.
“You can’t make such accusations. You must apologize to the esteemed president of our board.”
“Shut up,” Lionel said. “We’re all suspects. Would you care to question me, Herr Detective?”
Ben bowed to Lionel Ravage. “Not today, Herr President. I do not have the resources to mount an investigation.”
No one page can deal with the complexity of a book with any real interest. It can suggest, it can explore, but it cannot give you a genuine picture. The map is much too large. The page is much too small. But in this case, you come to the heart of the matter.
Lower Manhattan was a melting pot where Jews came from nowhere and became hardworking ghosts. They did not have a life for themselves. If I sound bleak, it was really much bleaker than anything I can say about it. Those who survived, survived with an open wound. The richer that they became, the more haunted they were.
The terrifying world we live in now, comes out of this dilemma. Violence that will never go away, violence that comes out of great suffering. Out of the fact that women had no real occupation in early 20th century New York, other than becoming seamstresses, housewives or prostitutes.
Ben understands this, knowing that he can’t really solve the problem, he still continues his search for this Jewish monster with a silver cane.
I had to write this book, because it is about my own heritage, and one of the remaining ghosts. I hope readers will see themselves and their history in the dark mirror I provide – that mirror, has its own magic.
The Page 69 Test: Under the Eye of God.
My Book, The Movie: Big Red.
Q&A with Jerome Charyn.
--Marshal Zeringue
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