From Publishers Weekly
Charyn's paean to Jazz Age New York stars the multifarious characters who graced the stages, speakeasies and diners around Broadway in the 1920s and '30s. Never, he says, was New York "New Yorkier" than in this "lawless, unbridled mecca where everybody could meet-hoodlums, heiresses, jazz singers, funny girls, dentists from Des Moines (so long as they had a little money)...." Around Broadway, Al Jolson rubbed shoulders with Ellin Mackay, "the richest girl in America," and George Gershwin would run into Mae West. In the words of nightclub owner Texas Guinan, "Better a square foot of New York than all the rest of the world in a lump." High spirits, though, don't prevent deep flaws in Charyn's book. The author, who has written more than 30 books of fiction, memoir and cultural studies, presents a huge array of characters, few of whom are explored deeply or coherently. Many of the myriad players are cursorily glossed over and then dropped from the narrative. The result is like walking into a glittering party where you don't know a soul and nobody bothers to make introductions. Those who already know the major and minor stars of this era will glean some colorful anecdotes, taken from disparate sources. Al Capone, for example, "liked to drink whisky out of a teacup" and Zelda Fitzgerald, before her breakdowns, was prone to dive into the fountain at Union Square. The force of the running prose, reminiscent of the high-kicking Follies girls, might carry interested readers through the disorganized narrative. Illus. not seen by PW. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Once upon a time Broadway was just another street. In Gangsters & Gold Diggers, Jerome Charyn transports readers back to a swaggering, golden era in American life—the Roaring Twenties—when Broadway suddenly exploded into Broadway. Damon Runyon was the first chronicler of the Big Street. He created the myth of Broadway, invented the "slanguage." The Ziegfeld Follies became its most important institution—everybody, including Zelda Fitzgerald, wanted to be a Follies Girl. Then came Lindy’s, a delicatessen and hangout for actors, bootleggers, singers, hustlers, chorus girls, and celebrities. Charyn looks at the men and women who helped make Broadway the most glamorous place on the planet, from Mae West to Fanny Brice, Legs Diamond to Irving Berlin, Louise Brooks to William Randolph Hearst, Scott Fitzgerald to Arnold Rothstein and the Gatsby-like gangster Owen Madden, and many more. In lively, cinematic prose, Charyn captures Broadway’s vagabondage, outlaw culture, and self-mythologizing. He brings a rollicking, rough-and-tumble period in New York history to life—conjuring an intoxicating portrait of Jazz Age excess by examining the denizens of that greatest of all "staggering machine[s] of desire," the street known as Broadway.


From the Inside Flap
A legendary New York writer picks up where Gangs of New York left off and brings the guys and dolls of old Broadway to life… Praise for Jerome Charyn: "Charyn is a magician. He’s also sui generis. There isn’t another writer in America even remotely like him." —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post "Jerome Charyn has been recreating the absurdity, the frenzy and the menace of contemporary life, using wit and imagination and style to hold a threatening world at bay…a contemporary American Balzac." —New York Newsday "Charyn has tamed his prose and makes it perform tricks. It’s a New York prose, street-smart, sly and full of lurches, like a series of subway stops on the way to hell." —New York Times "The richest imagination in contemporary American letters." —Lawrence Block "[Charyn’s] books constitute the highest kind of novelist art…absolutely unique among contemporary writers." —Los Angeles Times


About the Author
Jerome Charyn was born in the Bronx in 1937 and is the author of more than thirty books, including The Isaac Quartet, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, and Metropolis: New York as Myth, Marketplace and Magical Land. He divides his time between New York and Paris.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Once upon a time Broadway was just another street. In Gangsters & Gold Diggers, Jerome Charyn transports readers back to a swaggering, golden era in American life - the Roaring Twenties - when Broadway suddenly exploded into Broadway." Damon Runyon was the first chronicler of the Big Street. He created the myth of Broadway, invented the "slanguage." The Ziegfeld Follies became its most important institution - everybody, including Zelda Fitzgerald, wanted to be a Follies Girl. Then came Lindy's, a delicatessen and hangout for actors, bootleggers, singers, hustlers, chorus girls, and celebrities. Charyn looks at the men and women who helped make Broadway the most glamorous place on the planet, from Mae West to Fanny Brice, Legs Diamond to Irving Berlin, Louise Brooks to William Randolph Hearst, Scott Fitzgerald to Arnold Rothstein and the Gatsby-like gangster Owen Madden, and many more.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Scott and Zelda are here, and the movie star Louise Brooks, and Gilbert Seldes, the critic who stooped from the empyrean heights where most cultural interpreters dwelt to notice that George Herriman's comic strip "Krazy Kat" was one of the wittiest fables being spun in America. It was the heyday of Gloria Swanson and Bessie Smith and Ruby Keeler, of Al Jolson and Bert Williams and Jack Johnson. If you have only a nodding acquaintance with most of these luminaries, Charyn's book is a kind of primer on them, not to mention jazz babies, red hot mamas, gold diggers, "Hello, suckers!" and why Al Jolson deserves our attention even though he often performed in blackface. — Dennis Drabelle

Publishers Weekly

Charyn's paean to Jazz Age New York stars the multifarious characters who graced the stages, speakeasies and diners around Broadway in the 1920s and '30s. Never, he says, was New York "New Yorkier" than in this "lawless, unbridled mecca where everybody could meet-hoodlums, heiresses, jazz singers, funny girls, dentists from Des Moines (so long as they had a little money)...." Around Broadway, Al Jolson rubbed shoulders with Ellin Mackay, "the richest girl in America," and George Gershwin would run into Mae West. In the words of nightclub owner Texas Guinan, "Better a square foot of New York than all the rest of the world in a lump." High spirits, though, don't prevent deep flaws in Charyn's book. The author, who has written more than 30 books of fiction, memoir and cultural studies, presents a huge array of characters, few of whom are explored deeply or coherently. Many of the myriad players are cursorily glossed over and then dropped from the narrative. The result is like walking into a glittering party where you don't know a soul and nobody bothers to make introductions. Those who already know the major and minor stars of this era will glean some colorful anecdotes, taken from disparate sources. Al Capone, for example, "liked to drink whisky out of a teacup" and Zelda Fitzgerald, before her breakdowns, was prone to dive into the fountain at Union Square. The force of the running prose, reminiscent of the high-kicking Follies girls, might carry interested readers through the disorganized narrative. Illus. not seen by PW. (Dec. 1) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

What do Babe Ruth, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Al Jolson, Damon Runyon, Louise Brooks, and William Randolph Hearst have in common? They are all major characters in Charyn's (Bronx Boy) expos of the New York theater, literary, and underworld scenes in the early 20th century. The author combines some chronological history of Broadway with lengthy discourses on all-but-forgotten denizens of the shady side of Prohibition such as Arnold Rothstein and Owen Madden, as well as seedy entertainment figures on the order of Texas Guinan. Charyn certainly has a stylish way with the English language and uses quotations from contemporary sources to good effect, but it is hard to tell at what audience the book is directed-is he trying to document a time period or merely add another to his series of crime novels and fictionalized treatments of famous personages? Readers will be put off by the unnecessary vulgarisms, diffuse shifting of voices and settings, and strong opinions (sometimes with little to back them up), and an epilog dealing with New York after 9/11 and the movie Chicago shows promise but is rather self-serving. Libraries should consider this distinctly marginal purchase only if Charyn fans clamor for it.-Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews