Tar Baby

by Jerome Charyn, Charyn Jérôme

Cast in the form of a hilariously ribald parody of a literary quarterly, The Tar Baby is a brilliant, audacious, story-filled novel populated by an array of brawling academics and earthy townies. A commemorative issue honoring the late Anatole Waxman-Weissman, the book/journal parodies a number of academic fads and concerns as the various contributors expose their and their subject's many idiosyncrasies while pursuing their own private agendas.
"Clever, witty, and different," Publishers Weekly called the novel upon its original publication in 1973: "Ribald, tongue-in-cheek, Nabokovian." Library Journal's Bruce Allen called it "an object lesson in how visionary idealists become mired in mundaneness, and an ingeniously scatological and funny celebration of unsubduably dirty life forces." Long out of print, this is the first paperback edition of Charyn's most complex and innovative novel.

"Jerome Charyn has long ranked among the most talented, intelligent, and persevering of my contemporaries; and his fiction has established a solidly developing body of achievement. However, The Tar Baby represents a leap ahead, both conceptually and stylistically, and the sheer hilarity of the sustainedly marvelous invention ought to win for the book the audience it deserves." (Richard Kostelanetz)

"Clever, witty, and different. . . . Ribald, tongue-in-cheek, Nabokovian. Charyn's ingenuity and versatility are evident, and he will undoubtedly entertain sophisticates with his sly digs, buffoonery, and mazelike plot." (Publishers Weekly 9-27-72)

"An object lesson in how visionary idealists become mired in mundaneness, and an ingeniously scatological and funny celebration of unsubduably dirty life forces. . . . Charyn makes it all work, howlingly, in a brilliantly managed surrealistic collage, not much inferior to those of Barth and Nabokov�for me, the year's best novel so far." (Bruce Allen, Library Journal 11-1-72)

"An important book . . . an experiment in complex impressionistic and involutional form, striking and original in the extremes to which it juxtaposes comic stereotype and real suffering." (Albert J. Guerard, TriQuarterly)

Genres: Fiction, Novels

243 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With more than 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon calls him "one of the most important writers in American literature." New York Newsday hailed Charyn as "a contemporary American Balzac," and the Los Angeles Times described him as "absolutely unique among American writers."

Since the 1964 release of Charyn's first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published thirty novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays, and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year.

Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the American University of Paris.

In addition to writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top ten percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong."

Charyn's most recent novel, Jerzy, was described by The New Yorker as a "fictional fantasia" about the life of Jerzy Kosinski, the controversial author of The Painted Bird. In 2010, Charyn wrote The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, an imagined autobiography of the renowned poet, a book characterized by Joyce Carol Oates as a "fever-dream picaresque."

Charyn lives in New York City. He's currently working with artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka on an animated television series based on his Isaac Sidel crime novels.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

This bizarre and outrageous comedic novel is cast in the form of a titular literary magazine, set in the (fictional?) Californian borough of Galapagos, a backwoods dump populated by zany loonies and cartoon redneckers. Honouring the magazine’s contributor Anatole Waxman-Weissman—a kind of ramshackle bayou cod-philosopher—the issue opens up to all kinds of perverse bitchery from the bickering staff and Anatole’s loose ex-wife, interspersed with the usual dross found in local rags, such as snippets of Galapagian history and peculiar wanted-ads. Charyn’s satire of the more curious aspect of these magazines is excellent, and each contribution has clever and sparky aspects and playful prose, although the descent into the lives of these venal bogtrotting weirdoes and the outlandish humour becomes tiresome, especially in the long chapter ‘With Me,’ which sinks into Arakian trash and weighs down the work overall. Sporadically magnificent and way funnier than yr hoary old Pale Fire.

[George]

Gave up halfway through. Underwhelming. And if it's supposed to be satire, it's too tame. Maybe it was wild for readers in the early 70s, but nowadays the offense/shock threshold is much higher...well, at least for this reader. I recommend Theroux's Laura Warholic instead.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gonzo brilliance, almost a prototype of Charyn's later Johnny One-Eye.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this unique book's snark as it lampoons both academia and small-town politics with equal abandon. Its structure as a faux edition of a faux literary journal, accompanied by various additional ephemera, is a real gamble, but for me it pays off a lot more than it doesn't.

Readers who are less comfortable with experimental structures are understandably much less forgiving of the novel's admitted flaws. Myself, I rather appreciate risks taken that may occasionally disappoint, but more often than not hit their mark with relative precision.

Clearly, mileage may vary.

[Bill Burris · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected so much more out of this book. Something in the vein of The Postmodern Pooh. Which is my fault. But this book lacked any of the nasty take downs of academia I anticipated. What a disappointment.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early 1970s USA isn't my favourite literary time or place, and the clunkiness of the new "new" shows in this book. But it's reasonably bright (in a sleezy way) and while it is not "hilarious" as its blurb would have us believe. it is humorous in intent and, sometimes, reality. By no means a Must Read, but not bad if there's nothing else to hand.

[Noran Miss Pumkin]

got for $2, so we will see.....

[Trini]

Meh, made me regret not being a rich scholar

[Clare · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible.