Why am I passionate about this?
I was an English major in college and my dream was to write the Great American Novel. My literary heroes were writers like Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Jean Rhys, Margaret Drabble, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer. They “taught” me how to write. About a dozen years ago, I concentrated on writing crime novels, like Swann’s Last Song and Second Story Man, both of which were nominated for Shamus Awards (Second Story Man won the Beverly Hills Book Award.) I'm a magazine journalist and write nonfiction books, screenplays, plays, and book reviews. I teach writing here in New York City, and I’m on the Board of PrisonWrites and the New York Writers Workshop.
Charles' book list on reads for valuable lessons as a crime writer
Why did Charles love this book?
I grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. We lived above an all-purpose drugstore that included two aisles of paperback books.
Almost every day after school, that store became my own personal library. If were attracted by a particular title or cover, it would wind up in my to-buy list.
Seize the Day was one of those books. The protagonist is the hapless Tommy Wilhelm, a small-time loser who spends his life trying to impress his big-shot father (think Willie Loman only less successful).
Desperately trying to make something of himself that his father can be proud of, Wilhelm gets involved with conman father figure Tamkin.
What impressed me most was Bellow’s ability to create a living, breathing, deeply flawed character that you’re actually rooting for.
What makes characters like Wilhelm compelling is not only the constant struggle to survive in a world that seems to be stacked against them.…
1 author picked Seize the Day as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
“What makes all of this so remarkable is not merely Bellow’s eye and ear for vital detail. Nor is it his talent for exposing the innards of character in a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase. It is Bellow’s vision, his uncanny ability to seize the moment and to see beyond it.” –Chicago Sun-Times
A Penguin Classic
Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: He is separated from his wife and children, at odds with his vain,…