CHARYN, Jerome

(1937-)

   US writer who was born and educated in New York, which city he gradually transformed in his fiction into a MAGIC-REALIST venue whose mythopoeic resonances and exorbitant happenings hover at the edge of generic displacements (and beyond), and strongly prefigure the fabulated New Yorks of writers like John CROWLEY and Mark HELPRIN. Few of his 20 or so books are actually fantasy or sf, though most are FABULATIONS; but Darlin' Bill (1980) creates an almost totally imaginary West and Pinocchio's Nose (1983) carries its stymied protagonist into the 21st century, where he finally learns to relax, though the world itself is battered.

   JC

   Other works: The Magician's Wife (graph 1986 Belgium; first English version 1987 US) with François Boucq, a fantasy in GRAPHIC-NOVEL form; Billy Budd, K.G.B. (graph trans Elizabeth Bell 1991) with Boucq.