Hailed as the first great Soviet writer, Isaac Babel was at once a product and a victim of violent revolution. In tales of Cossack marauders and flashy Odessa gangsters, he perfectly captured the raw, edgy mood of the first years of the Russian Revolution. Masked, reckless, impassioned, charismatic, Babel himself was as fascinating as the characters he created. At last, in renowned author Jerome Charyn, Babel has a portraitist worthy of his quicksilver genius.

Though it traces the arc of Babel’s charmed life and mysterious death, Savage Shorthand bursts the confines of straight biography to become a meditation on the pleasures, torments, and meanings of Babel’s art. Even in childhood, Babel seemed destined to leave a mark. But it was only when his mentor, Maxim Gorky, ordered him to go out into the world of revolutionary Russia that Babel found his true voice and subject. His tales of the bandit king Benya Krik and the brutal raids of the Red Cavalry electrified Moscow. Overnight, Babel was a celebrity, with throngs of admirers and a train of lovers.

But with the rise of Stalin, Babel became a living ghost. Charyn brilliantly evokes the paranoid shadowland of the first wave of Stalin’s terror, when agents of the Cheka snuffed out artists like candle flames. Charyn’s chilling account of the circumstances of Babel’s death–hidden and lied about for decades by Stalin’s agents–finally sets the record straight.

For Jerome Charyn, Babel is the writer who epitomizes the vibrancy, violence, and tragedy of literature in the twentieth century. In Savage Shorthand, Charyn has turned his own lifelong obsession with Babel into a dazzling and original literary work.

"This portrait of Babel by the prolific Charyn (The Green Lantern etc.) is confounding for reasons he himself elaborates on: it's difficult to know much for certain about the life of the great Russian Jewish short-story writer (1894 — 1940), whom Charyn emphasizes was a self-mythologizer. Charyn begins the book by seeming to appropriate Babel's qualities for himself by describing how an editor said Charyn's first book called Babel's writings to mind. Ellipses at the end of paragraphs to indicate uncertainty in the narrative underscore the lack of hard facts; using the word 'some' as a modifier, as in 'Mandelstam would die in some transit camp,' has the effect of lessening the horror being described. Babel's death at Stalin's hand remains legendary for the reported sighting of the writer that followed his murder, but Charyn gets so caught up in such myths that he forgets to give us the man. 'Even as he bares himself, it's hard to figure Babel out,' Charyn notes. So perhaps one would do best to read Babel himself; his collected works have been reissued by Norton. Agent, Georges Borchardt. (On sale Oct. 18)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

“As a longtime admirer of Jerome Charyn’s writing, I expected something quirky and exceptional from his study of Isaac Babel. But this book, centered on the mystery of the great Russian writer’s life, heads with passion into territory beyond Babel’s tragedy. Having just finished the book, I think it something very like a masterpiece. I believe I’ll wake up tomorrow with the same opinion.”

Herbert Gold, author of Fathers and A Girl of Forty

From his emergence as revolutionary Russia's greatest writer to his tragic murder by Stalin, Isaac Babel, one of America's most brilliant and distinctive authors, is profiled in this deeply moving account.

Jerome Charyn is the author of more than thirty books, including Darlin’ Bill, which received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His latest novel The Green Lantern, is a finalist for the 2004 PEN/Faulkner award. He is a frequent contributor to Le Monde and the City section of The New York Times. He lives in New York and Paris, where he is Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University.