Short Story Review: Lorelei, by Jerome Charyn

This is another story in the Atlantic's annual fiction supplement, that misguided notion of theirs that fiction needs to be sequestered from their supposedly more 'real' content, tucked in the back of one issue a year. As if fiction were like a vitamin to be rationed in quotas. However, I have to say that in general, the stories in this issue are kick-ass prime cuts of literary steakhouse goodness.

Lorelei, by Jerome Charyn, is set in the Bronx, New York. I know only a few things about the Bronx: that it is home to Yankee Stadium, old and new, and that it is the only part of New York City that is not in or on an island. It is mythic to me, a funny name conjuring up visions of urban decay like painted subway cars, weedy vacant lots and tough guys with funny accents. Lorelei changed a few things about that for me.

In Lorelei, the Bronx is hometown to Howell, an engaging middle-aged con man who makes his living traveling the country, marrying widows and divorcees, taking a chunk of money, then skipping town. He's not after big money or out to ruin lives, really - he's a small time chiseler afraid of the big score, and he's getting old, without a retirement fund, and without a purpose to the rest of his life. What to do?

Howell, at a crossroads, returns to the Bronx and the Lorelei, a grand, stately apartment building in a row of grand, stately apartment buildings in the once posh Grand Concourse neighborhood. He'd grown up in the building, where his father had been the super. So, where I had been expecting a story about a con gone wrong, I instead found myself reading memoirs of a Bronx childhood. Howell as a child, befriending the building owner's daughter, a spoiled pretentious brat of a girl, and on the cusp of adulthood they come near falling in love. It was fear of her father that chased Howell on the road and a life of chiseling widows.

When he discovers that the girl and her father both still live in the building, that they've ensconced themselves in the failed neighborhood on the hopeful edge of renewal, Howell can't resist - he rents an apartment and moves in, hoping for, well - he doesn't know what, except perhaps another shot at his lost love. Then he gets invited to a dinner party with the girl and her father, and the story moves into hyperdrive, with characters and motivations mashing into each other, personalities and neuroses leading to revelations and despair, and the con does go horribly wrong after all.

This is a tour de force, really, a story that starts strong and moves quickly, and reaches into amazing scope and depth. It spans generations and crosses the country, all while keeping the point of narration in the Bronx, in a single building. It also manages to tell the history of the Concourse neighborhood, which once had palatial apartments near Yankee Stadium but fell to urban blight in the 60's and is only now starting to recover.

I had probably heard of Jerome Charyn but never read him. He's written 37 books including novels and mysteries. There are also three memoirs of his childhood in the Bronx. On top of that, there's a biography of Marilyn Monroe, and a cultural history of Ping Pong (and, yeah, looks like it's for real), in addition to maintaining his own youTube channel. Busy guy. I apologize, sir, for not knowing of you till now, but it's a big world, and I hope you understand.

The story is on-line. Read it here.