Synopses & Reviews
Tracing the historic arc of Abraham Lincoln’s life from his picaresque days as a gangly young man in Sangamon County, Illinois, through his improbable marriage to Kentucky belle Mary Todd, to his 1865 visit to war-shattered Richmond only days before his assassination, I Am Abraham hews to the familiar Lincoln saga, seamlessly braiding Lincoln family members and military figures with a parade of fictional extras—wise-cracking knaves, conniving hangers-on, patriotic whores, and dying soldiers. Using biblically cadenced prose, cornpone nineteenth-century humor, and Lincoln’s own letters and speeches, Jerome Charyn concocts a profoundly moral but troubled commander in chief, whose relationship with his Ophelia-like wife and sons—Robert, Willie, and Tad—is explored with penetrating psychological insight, utmost compassion, and the most ingenious novelistic license. Seized by melancholy and imbued with an unfaltering sense of human worth, Charyn’s President Lincoln comes to vibrant, three-dimensional life in this haunting portrait.
Review
"I Am Abraham is not only the best novel about President Lincoln since Gore Vidal’s Lincoln in 1984, but it is also twice as good to read." Gabor Boritt, author of < em=""> The Lincoln Enigma < m=""> and recipient of the National Humanities Medal
Review
"Audacious as ever, Jerome Charyn now casts his novelist's gimlet eye on sad-souled Abraham Lincoln, a man of many parts, who controls events and people--wife, sons, a splintering nation--even though they often are, as they must be, beyond his compassion or power. Brooding, dreamlike, resonant, and studded with strutting characters, is as wide and deep and morally sure as its wonderful subjects." Andrew Delbanco New York Review of Books
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"If all historians--or any historian--could write with the magnetic charm and authoritative verve of Jerome Charyn, American readers would be fighting over the privilege of learning about their past. They can learn much from this book--an audacious, first-person novel that makes Lincoln the most irresistible figure of a compelling story singed with equal doses of comedy, tragedy, and moral grandeur. Here is something beyond history and approaching art." Brenda Wineapple, author of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compassion: 1848-1877
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"Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature." Michael Chabon
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"Jerome Charyn is merely one of our finest writers with a polymorphous imagination and crack comic timing. Whatever milieu he chooses to inhabit, his characters sizzle with life, and his sentences are pure vernacular music, his voice unmistakable." Jonathan Lethem
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"Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer—so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible." Tom Bissell
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"The novel… succeeds in making the legendary figure more accessible, using Lincoln’s lifelong battle with depression as an avenue through which to explore his life and perspective…. A warts-and-all portrayal, not only of the lead, but of central supporting figures, most especially his tempestuous and difficult wife, Mary. Charyn has managed to craft a fictional autobiography that rings emotionally true." Publishers Weekly
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"Charyn faces the daunting task of fictionalizing the life of an American icon, but does so with aplomb. ...By employing a first-person narrative, he is able to inject Lincoln's inimitable intelligence, wit, and compassion into every page, as his homespun humor is underscored with his trademark pathos and humanity.... The legend of Lincoln continues to fascinate, and this compulsively readable fictional autobiography approaches the man and the myth from a fresh new angle." Margaret Flanagan
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"Thoughtful, observant and droll." Richard Brookhiser
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" is not only the best novel about President Lincoln since Gore Vidal's in 1984, but it is also twice as good to read." New York Times Book Review
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"Jerome Charyn [is] a fearless writer... Brave and brazen... The book is daringly imagined, written with exuberance, and with a remarkable command of historical detail. It gives us a human Lincoln besieged by vividly drawn enemies and allies... Placing Lincoln within the web ordinary and sometimes petty human relations is no small achievement." Gabor Boritt, author of The Lincoln Enigma and recipient of the National Humanities Medal
Synopsis
Narrated in Lincoln's own voice, the tragicomic promises to be the masterwork of Jerome Charyn's remarkable career.
Synopsis
Since publishing his first novel in 1964, Jerome Charyn has established himself as one of the most inventive and prolific literary chroniclers of the American landscape. Here in , Charyn returns with an unforgettable portrait of Lincoln and the Civil War. Narrated boldly in the first person, effortlessly mixes humor with Shakespearean-like tragedy, in the process creating an achingly human portrait of our sixteenth President.
About the Author
Jerome Charyn, a master of lyrical farce and literary ventriloquism, published his first novel in 1964 and is the author of Johnny One-Eye, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, I Am Abraham, and dozens of other acclaimed novels and nonfiction works. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Paris Review, American Scholar, Epoch, Narrative, Ellery Queen, and other magazines. Two of his memoirs have been named New York Times Book of the Year, and Michael Chabon has called him, "One of the most important writers in American literature." Charyn has also spent time as a professor and an international ranked table tennis player. He lives in New York and Paris.