Jerome Charyn
Author Interview - Jerome Charyn
Author of Big Red: A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles
It’s 1943. The Germans rule Europe, and the moguls rule Hollywood. Attendance is better than ever. Not even radio can compete with the Saturday matinee. The heart of America has become Hollywood Boulevard. And Rusty Redburn, a feisty lesbian visionary who works as a lowly servant to Harry Cohn at Columbia’s publicity department, lives right on the boulevard at the Hollywood Hotel.
Harry is worried about his biggest star, Rita Hayworth, who has moved in with the “Boy Genius” Orson Welles. He’s never had a star before Rita arrived. He schemes to have Rusty pretend to work as Rita's private secretary while spying on her. Rusty is far more clever than Harry Cohn. She worships Orson and Citizen Kane. And thus the story begins.
Nothing will last, neither the war, nor Harry Cohn, nor the marriage of Rita and Orson. And it’s Rusty who tells their tale.
Author Interview - Jerome Charyn
Author I draw inspiration from: I didn’t read books as a child. I read comic books. I loved Captain Marvel because it was drawn in such an unusual way – I always looked for the other. I started out as a painter, and had no talent at all, so I did my best to paint with words. I didn’t read a book in my whole life till I went to college. I was startled and baffled by James Joyce’s music, and he was the author who first influenced me. Then I read Emily Dickinson, and I was stupefied by the way she placed words together that I’ve never seen before. She was a magician and I wanted some of her magic.
Author Interview - Jerome Charyn | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book: In bed
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Stavrogin from Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed
Author Interview - Jerome Charyn | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: I was seven years old. WWII had just ended. Fear about the war had sustained me, kept me alert. I felt then that my life was over – I was dead. And the only things that could revive me were words.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: I think for me, as a reader, I prefer the printed word on the page. I do believe the printed word will disappear into a kind of slickness, into a kind of void, into a kind of twitter-twitter. But the spoken word will remain.
The last book I read: Profusely Illustrated by Edward Sorel
Author Interview - Jerome Charyn | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer: Both. Sometimes the music comes to me so that I have to write it down, and that spark doesn’t work when I’m at the computer. So, in my illegible handwriting, I declare what I want to see. Five minutes later, I can’t even read it, but it gets me going.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Huckleberry Finn (from Mark Twain.) I feel closest to him and his poetic lies.
Author Interview - Jerome Charyn | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: If I weren't an author, I’d be a business tycoon. The art of making money is a kind of poetry. It’s a poetry I detest, but after all, I would still have the music of money in my head.
Favorite decade in fashion history: It’s the age of Yves St Laurent. I loved his sadness and the elegance of his line. I did my best to interview him for Le Monde. He first agreed to the interview, but in the end he said to me: “Little boy, I’m too depressed.”
Place I’d most like to travel: I do my best traveling inside my head. Otherwise I love Paris and Rome and the hills of Tuscany. I’d love to see Wyoming, because God lives somewhere in those mountains, but it may already be too late.
My signature drink: As a child, my most detested drink in the world was Lipton’s Tea. I didn’t understand that my mother used one tea bag for six glasses to save money. Therefore, like Proust's madeleine, it reminded me of dishwater. Then, in my old age, my wife served me a fantastic, magical tea. What the “F” is this, I asked? It was Lipton’s. That’s impossible, I exclaimed. How did you do this? She replied, “I simply put several tea bags into the pot.”
Now I have Lipton’s every morning. “F” my childhood.
Favorite artist: Basquiat. He had so much electricity in his head – so many sparks that he couldn’t survive.
Number one on my bucket list: To have my cat and my wife sit on my lap. Cat first.
Anything else you'd like to add: About my novel, Big Red:
This is a look at the Golden Age of Hollywood through the prism of 2022. The Golden Age doesn’t look quite as golden anymore, but there were glorious people such as Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, who are the stars of the novel.
I had only one aim in writing this book, to break the reader’s heart with a closer look at Rita.
Find more from the author:
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Author Bio: “One of the most important writers in American literature” (Michael Chabon), Jerome Charyn is the award-winning author of more than fifty works, including The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson. A renowned scholar of twentieth-century Hollywood, he lives in Manhattan.
