Jerome Charyn's White House & Teddy's Desk
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
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| Theodore Roosevelt - The Commish at his desk. |
It was a cowtown compared to London, Paris, or Berlin, a carbuncle south of Baltimore, created by George Washington, the
first American king, to house a squalid little government that was frightened
of its thirteen constituent states. It was built on a swamp, around a limestone
mansion for the president-king, a mansion that began to crumble and peel soon
as it was put up. It was a city of mosquitoes, Washington, D.C.,
with a dampness that bit at you in the winter and made you feverish in the
long, summer blaze. It couldn’t even rule itself. Congress squatted over the
city, prepared its finances, and stroked it to sleep. It had a few scattered
markets and fisheries, not centers of trade, just monuments, cafeterias,
alleys, and government houses. But it was the wartime capital of the world.
The Franklin Scare – Jerome Charyn – 1977
Ulysses put his son to bed, but he couldn’t find the key to his trunk. He walked out of the Willard in his old travel uniform with missing buttons and a frayed cuff, crossed the miasma of Pennsylvania Avenue, and wandered into the Mansion. Nicolay & Hay [John Nicolay and John Hay, secretaries to Lincoln and his biographers] hadn’t expected Grant until tomorrow. And here he was in the middle of a White House gala with mud in his boots.
Folks swarmed around him – gloves were
lost, crinolines collapsed, and shoes were trampled on in that swarm. It was
like an invading army in our salon. And that’s how I first met Ulysses Grant. I
looked into his blue-gray eyes, and could feel that sense of risk I hadn’t been
able to find in my other generals. He fights, he kills. He stole the Mississippi from the
Rebels. And now he’s come to the capital in his rumpled uniform, a commander
who made sure his mules were fed.
I Am Abraham – Jerome Charyn - 2014
A reader lives through many disappointments
and frustrations in one’s life. As a lifelong reader I can attest to this.
Perhaps the most taxing one is waiting for
a favourite author to get on with it and write another. As a Joyce Carol Oates
fan I can count on at least one a year. But, alas, Colin Dexter, Eric Ambler,
Daphne du Maurier, Michael Dibdin, José Saramago and Reginald Hill, not to mention John Cheever, they no longer
have access to a writing desk.
This means that I
often re-read du Maurier's The House on the Strand, Ambler's A
Coffin for Dimitrios, and Dibdin's the Dead Lagoon. There is not one year that I don’t
dip into Cheever’s The Swimmer.
I am particularly
jealous of those who discover a writer with a long suit of novels late in the game. They can
have an orgy. Rosemary and I are patiently waiting for one more Andrea
Camilleri, Montalbano procedural to be translated from the Italian. While she does write in English Donna Leon and her Commissario Guido Brunetti solving crime in Venice appear only once per year.. When is the next
one? And aren’t those who can buy or check out all her, 20 plus novels in a
reading frenzy to be disliked for that pleasure?
I know that with
patience I can expect a Le Carré, a Joseph Kanon and a Martin Cruz Smith soon enough.
Another terrible
frustration is when a favourite writer loses a publisher. There is one pleasant
exception I can cite here, my friend and Niagara-on-the-Lake author R. Robert
Janes has just published two new Kohler/St-Cyr on The Mysterious Press (the same publisher of Jerome Charyn's Isaac Sidel novels of which I will mention below) in which
they are printed on demand.
A similar frustration
happens when authors abandon my favourite protagonists. Robert Wilson left Inspector
Falcón in Seville
and Arturo Perez-Reverte insists on writing serious novels while we wait for
one more Capitán Alatriste.
There are a few
compensations beyond re-reading. I can discover new authors or especially now
turning on my wife and a few friends to some of these authors who do not suffer
writing cramp.
One such author is
Jerome Charyn who to date, after the recent publishing of his “first-person-novelized-biography”
on Lincoln, I Am Abraham has 34 other works of fiction listed and 12
non-fiction ones including one of the best ever about New York City, Metropolis.
Some of his novels are
curiously linked.
We know that in I Am
Abraham, mulatto seamstress and First Lady confidant, Elizabeth (Yib) Keckley
holds a school for the black children (and Lincoln’s sons Tad and William) in the White
House Basement:
She didn’t want to be
consoled. All she wanted was a classroom. So I [Abraham Lincoln] to sit in one
of her classes, not to spy on her, you see, but to get acquainted with Yib and
her chalkboard. She didn’t seem startled when I entered her classroom in the
basement and sat down on a tiny stool next to Willie and Tad and the servant
boys. I’d just come back from the War Department and was still wearing my
chapeau. It was unconscionably impolite, and I placed the stovepipe hat on my
knee, like a toadstool on a writing desk. Desks were in short supply, and all
her pupils had to sit around a rickety table with their tablets and black lead
pencils, while Elizabeth,
still in her mourner’s black gloves, scratched a word on the chalkboard with
all the flair of a schoolmarm.
Turpitude.
I Am Abraham, Jerome
Charyn- 2014
He came through the
north gate with a card signed by the Chief of Naval Operations. A soldier
inspected his barbering tools. A Secret Service man accompanied him to the
usher’s office. It was routine business. One of the admirals had recommended
Seaman Beebe. The President’s other barber was sick. An usher escorted him up
to the second floor. He was gone in half an hour.
No one expected to see
him a second time. It was the end of May. He wore the same summer “whites.” The
weather in the mansion was intolerable, but the sailor didn’t seem to sweat. He
had the President’s signature on his pass. He was given full authority to come
and go. The Boss snatched him up from the admirals. He had nothing to do with
the Navy now. He was assigned to Headquarters, the Commander-in-Chief.
The Franklin Scare –
Jerome Charyn – 1975
You must at this point
trust me that if you have enjoyed I Am Abraham, the next Charyn novel to find
and read is The Franklin Scare. You will learn of the barber seaman who lives
in the White House attic, you will find out of the complex relationship
Roosevelt had with his wife and you will be startled (all in good fun) to
discover Beeb’s connection with J. Edgar Hoover.
But Charyn’s
relationship with White House goings on does not end here.
You might know that
Theodore Roosevelt was the first acting Police Commissioner in New York City. He worked at a famous desk. Read Caleb Carr's The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness to learn more.
What you might not
know is that another man, a fictitious character in a string of Charyn novels,
Isaac Sidel who rose in the ranks to become the “Pink Commish” (because of his
leftist leanings) also occupied that desk.
What is delightful and
delicious is that we know that by the end of Under The Eye Of God (Jerome Charyn – 2012) Isaac Sidel is Vice President of the United States and is about to become the
occupier of the White House (there are problems with the Pres) and perhaps sit at that other desk once used by
Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.
The January sun beat
down on his pate. He bit into the wind that swept off the canal. He could
finish up his seven days of mourning right now. He clung to Daniel and Darl,
clung to Marianna, and he knew what would please him most in the president’s
palace – the waft of butternut cookies from the White House kitchen, with both
of Inez’s babies beside him.
The January sun beat
down on his pate. He bit into the wind that swept off the canal. He could
finish up his seven days of mourning right now. He clung to Daniel and Darl,
clung to Marianna, and he knew what would please him most in the president’s
palace – the waft of butternut cookies from the White House kitchen, with both
of Inez’s babies beside him.
Under the Eye of God –
An Isaac Sidel Novel
Jerome Charyn - 20102
I Am Abraham - Which One?
I left them in the ground - Emily Dickinson
That Silver Sword of Appomattox
That Dark Lady from Belorusse
And Zero at the Bone
Currer Bell
Glock- Verb-Transitive
Blue Eyes, the butterfly and a picot
That Vampire of Paris
I Am Abraham - Which One?
I left them in the ground - Emily Dickinson
That Silver Sword of Appomattox
That Dark Lady from Belorusse
And Zero at the Bone
Currer Bell
Glock- Verb-Transitive
Blue Eyes, the butterfly and a picot
That Vampire of Paris
