It Is Always So Simple, And So

Jerome Charyn Is One Of The Most Important Writers In American Literature And One Of Only Three Now Writing Whose Work Makes Me Truly Happy To Be A Reader.

When I Remember That Dizzy Summer, That Dull, Stupid, Lovely, Dire Summer, It Seems That In Those Days I Ate My Lunches, Smelled Another's Skin, Noticed A Shade Of Yellow, Even Simply Sat, With Greater Lust And Hopefulness - And That I Lusted With Greater Faith, Hoped With Greater Abandon. The People I Loved Were Celebrities, Surrounded By Rumor And Fanfare; The Places I Sat With Them, Movie Lots And Monuments. No Doubt All Of This Is Not True Remembrance But The Ruinous Work Of Nostalgia, Which Obliterates The Past, And No Doubt, As Usual, I Have Exaggerated Everything.

You Need Three Things To Become A Successful Novelist: Talent, Luck And Discipline. Discipline Is The One Element Of Those Three Things That You Can Control, And So That Is The One That You Have To Focus On Controlling, And You Just Have To Hope And Trust In The Other Two.

The Problems You Have As A Novelist Tend To Have To Do With Making A Living And Trying To Find Ways To Supplement The Income You Get From Writing Novels. For A Lot Of Writers, That Involves Teaching. In My Case, So Far, I've Been Able To Get By Working In Hollywood With This Tv Stuff I've Been Doing. And It's Very Important, Because My Wife Is A Writer, Too, And We Don't Have Health Insurance Through Any Employer.

All Literature, Highbrow Or Low, From The Aeneid Onward, Is Fan Fiction....through Parody And Pastiche, Allusion And Homage, Retelling And Reimagining The Stories That Were Told Before Us And That We Have Come Of Age Loving--amateurs--we Proceed, Seeking Out The Blank Places In The Map That Our Favorite Writers, In Their Greatness And Negligence, Have Left For Us, Hoping To Pass On To Our Own Readers--should We Be Lucky Enough To Find Any--some Of The Pleasure That We Ourselves Have Taken In The Stuff That We Love: To Get In On The Game. All Novels Are Sequels; Influence Is Bliss.