The Black Swan: A Memoir (Hardcover)

by Jerome Charyn (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Picking up where his much-praised memoir The Dark Lady from Belorusse left off, Jerome Charyn continues the story of his childhood adventures in the Bronx. The year is 1949, and 11-year-old "Baby" (the nickname survived the 1947 arrival of younger brother Marve) regularly skips school to sneak off to a local movie theater, the Luxor. He's informally adopted by the theater's three eccentric owners, Bronx natives and classmates at Harvard who dropped out to purchase the Luxor and share a nearby apartment. Two of them pine for their former high school teacher, the married (and alcoholic) Mrs. Green, while the third burns with unrequited passion for a handsome fireman. Next, Baby connects with a local gangster, who sends him out to collect protection money from the area's businesses, ostensibly as payment for cases of celery tonic. The extensive stretches of dialogue are as colorful as the characters, and if it all seems a little too picturesque to be believable, well, the "Note to the Reader" does admit that the people, places, and events depicted "are the product of imaginative recreation." Who cares? Charyn's roistering account brings to life postwar New York City with such vividness and gusto that if it isn't true, it ought to be. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
A phantasmagoric medium by definition, movies appeal to us because they are literal projections of our deepest fantasies and fears, according to film critic and novelist Charyn. In a sequel to his acclaimed memoir, The Dark Lady from Belorusse, the author transports us to his early teen years in the Bronx, when he first discovered his obsession with the movies while seeking refuge from his difficult home life. Charyn's narrative resists the tired convention in which a misunderstood teen finds salvation in a fantasy world; instead, his memories of his early fascination with film unfold as a surreal, funny, often deeply disturbing reverie. Playing hooky from school, Charyn would sneak into the local movie palace to watch Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah until he met the theater's owners, three draft-evading, possibly gay gangsters who lived in the basement. Charyn regales us with stories about Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky, problems with Charyn's probation officer at school, a gay fireman named Dan O'Brian and the Black Swan, "the most celebrated casino and country club in the Catskill mountains." As the narrator dreamily reenacts plots from 1940s films, these characters and places move in and out of his hallucinatory reminiscences, while Charyn delicately weaves together movies, memories and intensely personal myths to re-create the daring and dangerous realm of his childhood imagination from the vantage point of an adult. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 182 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312208774
• ISBN-13: 978-0312208776
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,797,636 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bronx Archipelago, August 15, 2001

By	taking a rest - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

"The Black Swan", is the sequel to, "The Dark Lady From Belorusse". I have not read the first volume, however the sequel stands on its own as a great piece of writing. I certainly intend to go back to the first, but if the latter were the only volume at hand, I would not hesitate to recommend others begin with it as I did. The book is described as a memoir, however there is a note at the end that states that events while based on his experiences as a youth also, "are the product of imaginative recreation". The balance of the disclaimer either is meant to be amusing, or is an effort to keep the Author out of the Federal Witness Protection Program.

The setting is The Bronx a few years after World War II. Amongst the other colorful characters, this is the time of Meyer Lansky who influences more than one event in the book. There are a host of other lesser members of the crime world that deal with anything from gambling, to cornering the market on Celery Tonic.

The one venture outside the Bronx is to the Catskill Mountains home not only to the name of the book, The Black Swan, but is also the residence of The Dark Lady who deals cards to her various infamous admirers. Throughout all of this is great humor whether of the darker sort related to King Farouk and The Bataan March, or what is the cigarette of preference at a school for asthmatics in Arizona.

After the disclaimer in the rear, I don't know where the line separating fact from imaginative recreation resides. Were all of the book true it would be a remarkable story as well as hilarious, and if fiction, nothing is diminished from a reading perspective. Who knows, maybe the kid did have a probation officer he fell hard for who was Lana Turner's twin. Fact or fantasy, who cares, a great piece of writing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A singular, poignant memoir, June 16, 2001

By A Customer

Charyn's prose defies category: though published as nonfiction, this memoir reads like some of his singular, post-modern detective fiction. Transports us back to the Bronx of yore, with a cast of characters that's unforgettable.