Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories

Fiction & Literature, Short Stories
Cover of the book Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories by Jerome Charyn, Liveright
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Jerome Charyn ISBN: 9780871404985
Publisher: Liveright Publication: June 1, 2015
Imprint: Liveright Language: English
Author: Jerome Charyn
ISBN: 9780871404985
Publisher: Liveright
Publication: June 1, 2015
Imprint: Liveright
Language: English

Brooklyn is dead. Long live the Bronx! In Bitter Bronx, Jerome Charyn returns to his roots and leads the literary renaissance of an oft-overlooked borough in this surprising new collection.

In Bitter Bronx, one of our most gifted and original novelists depicts a world before and after modern urban renewal destroyed the gritty sanctity of a land made famous by Ruth, Gehrig, and Joltin' Joe.

Bitter Bronx is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with Jerome Charyn's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row, amid a "land of deprivation…where fathers trundled home…with a monumental sadness on their shoulders."

In "Lorelei," a lonely hearts grifter returns home and finds his childhood sweetheart still living in the same apartment house on the Concourse; in "Archy and Mehitabel" a high school romance blossoms around a newspaper comic strip; in "Major Leaguer" a former New York Yankee confronts both a gang of drug dealers and the wreckage that Robert Moses wrought in his old neighborhood; and in three interconnected stories—"Silk & Silk," "Little Sister," and "Marla"—Marla Silk, a successful Manhattan attorney, discovers her father's past in the Bronx and a mysterious younger sister who was hidden from her, kept in a fancy rest home near the Botanical Garden. In these stories and others, the past and present tumble together in Charyn's singular and distinctly "New York prose, street-smart, sly, and full of lurches" (John Leonard, New York Times).

Throughout it all looms the "master builder" Robert Moses, a man who believed he could "save" the Bronx by building a highway through it, dynamiting whole neighborhoods in the process. Bitter Bronx stands as both a fictional eulogy for the people and places paved over by Moses' expressway and an affirmation of Charyn's "brilliant imagination" (Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune).

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Brooklyn is dead. Long live the Bronx! In Bitter Bronx, Jerome Charyn returns to his roots and leads the literary renaissance of an oft-overlooked borough in this surprising new collection.

In Bitter Bronx, one of our most gifted and original novelists depicts a world before and after modern urban renewal destroyed the gritty sanctity of a land made famous by Ruth, Gehrig, and Joltin' Joe.

Bitter Bronx is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with Jerome Charyn's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row, amid a "land of deprivation…where fathers trundled home…with a monumental sadness on their shoulders."

In "Lorelei," a lonely hearts grifter returns home and finds his childhood sweetheart still living in the same apartment house on the Concourse; in "Archy and Mehitabel" a high school romance blossoms around a newspaper comic strip; in "Major Leaguer" a former New York Yankee confronts both a gang of drug dealers and the wreckage that Robert Moses wrought in his old neighborhood; and in three interconnected stories—"Silk & Silk," "Little Sister," and "Marla"—Marla Silk, a successful Manhattan attorney, discovers her father's past in the Bronx and a mysterious younger sister who was hidden from her, kept in a fancy rest home near the Botanical Garden. In these stories and others, the past and present tumble together in Charyn's singular and distinctly "New York prose, street-smart, sly, and full of lurches" (John Leonard, New York Times).

Throughout it all looms the "master builder" Robert Moses, a man who believed he could "save" the Bronx by building a highway through it, dynamiting whole neighborhoods in the process. Bitter Bronx stands as both a fictional eulogy for the people and places paved over by Moses' expressway and an affirmation of Charyn's "brilliant imagination" (Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune).

More books from Liveright

Cover of the book One Nation Under Gold: How One Precious Metal Has Dominated the American Imagination for Four Centuries by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Pontius Pilate: Deciphering a Memory by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book ViVa by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book The Meaning of Human Existence by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book The Conquest of Happiness by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Indigo: A Novel by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Crime and Punishment: A New Translation by Jerome Charyn
Cover of the book Hold Still: A Novel by Jerome Charyn
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy