JEROME CHARYN chats to Maxim Jakubowski (writer, editor, publisher, bookshop owner & critic) & Paul Burke about his new novel BIG RED, Hollywood the real capital of America, Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, graphic novels, the essence of noir and the female Samson.
BIG RED: NARRATED BY A STARRY-EYED LESBIAN, BIG RED REIMAGINES THE TRAGIC CAREER OF RITA HAYWORTH AND HER INDOMITABLE HUSBAND, ORSON WELLES.
Set amidst the noir glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age, Big Red re-envisions the life of one of America's most enduring icons: Gilda herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red hair and hypnotic dancing helped make her the quintessential movie star of the 1940s.
With narrator Rusty Redburn - a feisty second-string gossip columnist from Kalamazoo tasked with spying on Hayworth by Columbia movie mogul Harry 'The Janitor' Cohn - as our guide, we follow the meteoric rise and heartrending demise of the actress, encountering her exploitative father, Eduardo; her controlling husband, 'boy genius' Orson Welles; and notorious journalist Louella Parsons, among many others. Mixing his trademark screwball comedy and unerring tragedy, Jerome Charyn, with his 'polymorphous imagination' (Jonathan Lethem) reanimates film classics such as Cover Girl, Gilda, and The Lady from Shanghai.
An insightful, tender portrait of a seemingly halcyon age before blockbusters and film franchises, Big Red promises to consume both Hollywood cinephiles and neophytes alike.
Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction. Among other honors, he has received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and his novels have been selected as finalists for the Firecracker Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Charyn lives in New York.
Recommendations (Film): Chinatown, The Lady From Shanghai, Duel In The Sun, Chimes At Midnight, Citizen Kane, Touch Of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Decision To Leave, Gold Diggers of 1933, On The Waterfront, The Stranger, Vertigo.
Books: James Ellroy, No Country for Old Men Cormac McCarthy, City of Nets Otto Friedrich.
Produced by Junkyard Dog
Music courtesy of Southgate and Leigh
Crime Time
Paul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover and the European Literature Network. He is also a CWA Historical Dagger Judge 2022 .
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