#325 Archy and Mehitabel- Jerome Charyn
Archy and Mehitable was an old cartoon written by Don
Marquis and appeared regularly in the Evening Sun daily newspaper. They are a
poetry writing cockroach and alley cat duo always on their own adventures.
Jerome and Merle are such a pair, at least in Merle’s mind.
She was a brilliantly talented singer and avid teenage
reader, but was also a bit of a shut it.
Her “liquid imagination” would often meld the world of literature and
reality as she often referenced William Blake, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, etc.
“Her stories and poems were chiseled dreams from her days
and nights in a madhouse.”
She liked Jerome, thought of his as her little cockroach,
and allowed him into the sanctuary of her west-side home. Her parents, leery of
rumors and bad reputation in their high culture clique liked Jerome immediately
because of his humbleness and his own talents.
“I went to Music and Art [school] and looked like J.D.
Salinger. That was enough of a resume.”
All the world’s a stage, so says Shakespeare—I guess that
makes us all characters. Charyn certainly has found that line between genuine
New York characters and fictional story telling. I don’t even want to try to
figure out where that is.
No comments:
Post a Comment