Big Red

"Jerome Charyn's movie-love dances like a flame over every page of Big Red. Like its gloriously outspoken narrator-who never existed but should have-the book is bewitched by cinema and also hardheaded about the crass, exploitative reality of the dream factory. It's a dazzling romp through old Hollywood, and a fiercely loving effort to set the record straight."-Imogen Sara Smith, film critic and author of In Lonely Places"Big Red is the most entertaining book I've read all year. It's as if Herman Wouk and James Ellroy had a love child, and that love child was given a typewriter at birth. This is a wise, hilarious, and very deep look into Hollywood's ambitions, dreams, and indulgences. I hope Jerome Charyn is already at work on its sequel."?-Brian Koppelman, co-creator and showrunner of Billions"Jerome Charyn is an American original. His prose is scintillant, seemingly without effort or strain, yet unfailingly brilliant & audacious. In 'Big Red' the characteristic virtuosity is present--but beneath, a tender, bruised heart."-Joyce Carol Oates"In an astounding sixth decade of productivity, Jerome Charyn remains one of our finest writers. . . . Whatever milieu he chooses to inhabit, his characters sizzle with life, and his sentences are pure vernacular music, his voice unmistakable."-Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn"Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature."-Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"No one writes historical fiction better than Jerome Charyn, and Big Red, his latest, narrated by the marvelously wry Rusty Redburn, is the hilarious and moving tale of a bygone Hollywood-its glamour, its stars, its moguls, its dreams, and its victims-all told with the tender wisdom of a good friend."-Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers