Bryan Charles profile picture

Bryan Charles

Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way is in bookstores now

About Me


Author of the novel GRAB ON TO ME TIGHTLY AS IF I KNEW THE WAY , published in 2006 by Harper Perennial.
For other stuff, including poems, essays and two whole short stories, please visit NO SLANDER .
Visit my page on GOOD READS where among other things you can rate my book, write a review, find out what other people are reading etc.
BLURBS
"Finally here's a novel of real feeling about an era that's already been rushed to nostalgic box-set status. Bryan Charles trades in glib knowingness for deeper kinds of irony, never flinches from anger and yearning, and pulls off some charged, risky prose, to boot. Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way is as brave and funny a debut as I've read in a long time." --Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land
"Even among the literature one admires and enjoys there is a special category of writing that shoots into you like a bolt of electricity, sparking all kinds of excited feelings about art and life and writing, that fills you with the spirit of possibility and makes you laugh. Grab On to Me Tightly As If I Knew the Way is such a book." --Thomas Beller, author of The Sleep-Over Artist and How to be a Man
"If you were one of those kids in high school who played sports or were, you know, happy and popular or whatever, I dont know what to say to you. If you were actually made of flesh and bone like the rest of us, fumbling your way through, and looking at the world like its not quite right but you dont know why, Bryan Charles will get inside your brain and make sense of it for you once and for all, and while hes at it hell make you laugh hard and possibly scream in pain, but in a good way, in a way that makes you feel known". --Elizabeth Crane, author of When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory
*Starred Review* The wistful title (taken from song lyrics by the band Pavement), eye-catching cover art from Chicago printmaker Jay Ryan, and fine writing from the gifted Charles make for a powerful combination in a debut novel that seems poised to generate a fair amount of buzz. It's 1992, and Vim Sweeney, newly graduated from Kalamazoo High School and a member of the band Judy Lumpers, is casting a wary eye toward the future: "college, beer, job, marriage, babies, debt, divorce, nuclear annihilation." Kurt Cobain is taking the music world by storm, hometown boy Derek Jeter is making his mark in the major leagues, and Vim is washing dishes at the Gull Lake Cafe side by side with dour ex-felon Wendell, wondering all the while if "it's too early in the game to concede defeat." Charles strings together poetic, episodic glimpses of Vim's life, including his erotic infatuation with his bandmate's girlfriend, his anger at his deadbeat dad and love for his stepfather, and, most of all, his desperate yearning to make sense of the world. Telegraphing ambience in the details--pithy T-shirt slogans, brightly lit donut shops, apt song lyrics--Charles draws a loving if unforgiving portrait of the seedy, semirural Midwest. His approach--plenty of heart and laugh-out-loud humor--will invite comparisons to Nick Hornby, but let it be said that Charles does it his way. --Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
"Bryan Charles's unlikely hero, Vim Sweeney, revitalizes the coming-of-age genre." --Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago
"Pretty much every halfway decent novel with a teenage narrator gets compared to The Catcher in the Rye. Usually the author's a big phony, passing off YA crap as fancy literature. Not Bryan Charles, whose debut, Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way, is a stellar read. His messed-up, seriously melancholy, punk-rock romantic narrator, Vim Sweeney, is the true-blue modern incarnation of Holden Caulfield. If Salinger's boy had graduated from high school in the mid-90s in small-town Michigan, he would have played in a lame band, fallen for the drummer's sexy depressive girlfriend, quit his dish-washing job for no reason, written imaginary letters to his absentee father, made smart remarks to cover up his sadness, and just about fallen apart from how heartbreaking and funny and stupid and excellent life is. Think Salinger sprinkled with Nick Hornby, Chuck Klosterman, Sam Lipsyte, and Matthew Sharpe. Bottom line? Catch him while you can." --DailyCandy San Francisco
"Addictive . . . the first-time author's writing is funny and unpredictable, and he proves impressively adept at capturing the inchoate ache of adolescent longing." --Washington Post Media Mix, 6/18/06
"Go buy Bryan Charles's brave and beautifully written novel about music and growing up, Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way." --Time Out New York
". . . sketches a teenage identity crisis of the early ’90s in sharp detail.”--Village Voice
"Charles’ somewhat heavy hand produces not only a convincing, pitiable sketch of a teenager but also a disarming main character . . . It’s all so uncomfortably familiar that you can’t help wanting to cut this wound-up kid some slack . . . Charles also has a talent for creating scenes in record stores and at all-ages shows that are almost cinematic . . . He has created what is inarguably an exercise in nostalgia, but it is a gentle and candid one."--Shauna Cowal, Washington City Paper
"Great . . . my book of the year . . . steeped in incredible music, it is so beautifully written I was in tears at times from the prose alone . . ."--Gary Lightbody of the rock band Snow Patrol
CONTACT
I know it's tempting to click Send a Message up above and by all means continue to do so but if you want to write a real paper letter, which I heartily encourage, please write me c/o McCormick & Williams, 37 West 20th Street, Suite 606, New York NY 10011

My Interests

I'd like to meet:

filthy, dirty, cloudy, muddy, messy, mucky, crystal clear

Music:

Pavement, Jicks, Spoon, Beatles, REM, Nirvana, Jawbreaker, Robyn Hitchcock, Eminem, Dinosaur Jr, Bob Dylan, Smashing Pumpkins, Nas, Tom Petty, Chisel, Stone Temple Pilots, Monorchid, Nation of Ulysses, Simon and Garfunkel, Jesus Lizard, Girls Against Boys, Bright Eyes, Notorious BIG, Elliott Smith, Zombies, New Pornographers, Slick Rick, Radiohead, the National, Weezer, Guided By Voices, Cheap Trick, Rolling Stones, Superchunk, Wu Tang Clan, Sloan, Laughing Hyenas, Mudhoney, Pixies, the Doors, the Cure, Buffalo Tom, Bruce Springsteen, Jimi Hendrix, Modest Mouse, New Order, Aaliyah, Ludacris, U2, the Thermals, a lot of bands I kept secret over the years like Everclear, Third Eye Blind, Sugar Ray, Bush, Kalamazoo bands like Rollinghead, Vine, twitch, Deconstruction, Fletcher, So This is Outer Space, Broken Hearts Are Blue, Inourselves, Hornet, many more

Movies:

The Graduate, Half Nelson, Five Easy Pieces, Fast Times, Just One of the Guys, The Terminator, Dawn of the Dead, Badlands, Days of Heaven, Thin Red Line, No Country for Old Men, What About Bob?, The Departed, Rushmore, Kramer vs. Kramer, Factotum, My Own Private Idaho, Brick, Elephant, Last Days, A Simple Plan, Miller's Crossing, Groundhog Day, Back to School, No Retreat No Surrender, Ordinary People, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Doors, Cape Fear, many more

Television:

Recently I went on YouTube and watched the big transformation scene in American Werewolf in London. On the side, in the related videos section, there was a clip from the old TV show Manimal. I clicked on that. It showed the main guy turning into a panther. It was weird to see that because I remember watching Manimal when it was on for real when I was a kid. I hadn't thought of it in a long time. The special effects were shitty. Manimal was only on for eight weeks and I watched it every one of those damn weeks. If you're bored and looking for something to see on YouTube, search for Manimal and watch the dude become a panther, watch his hands bubble into paws. As far as modern-day shows I really like The Sopranos, but that feels more like a really great movie played out over eight years. A couple of months ago my girlfriend and I drove out to New Jersey and went to Pizzaland, which you can see in the opening credits of the show. It's a small place, about the size of my kitchen, but the pizza is good.

Books:

Some writers I like are: Mary Gaitskill, Charles Bukowski, George Pelecanos, Barry Hannah, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, Don DeLillo, Jack Kerouac and Beats, NY School poets, Elmore Leonard, James M. Cain, Thom Jones, PG Wodehouse, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O'Hara, Charles Portis, Scott Smith, Joy Williams, Richard Yates, Patricia Highsmith, Wallace Stevens, Irini Spanidou, Thomas McGuane, Nathanael West, Walker Percy, JD Salinger, Stephen King, Joan Silber. And here is every book I read in 2006 in the order that I read them: Call It Sleep by Henry Roth; The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro; Darling by Honor Moore; The Man With the Getaway Face by Richard Stark; The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell; The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac; Ideas of Heaven by Joan Silber; On the Natural History of Destruction by WG Sebald; Big Sur by Jack Kerouac; 361 by Donald Westlake; Lucky Us by Joan Silber; The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac; Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac; The Dog of the South by Charles Portis; Honored Guest by Joy Williams; Home Land by Sam Lipsyte; Kerouac by Ann Charters; The Ruins by Scott Smith; Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac; Lonesone Traveler by Jack Kerouac; Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith; Playback by Raymond Chandler; In Cold Blood by Truman Capote; Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote; Tristessa by Jack Kerouac; The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown; The First Hurt by Rachel Sherman; Love Me Hate Me by Jeff Pearlman; The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith; Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman; A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley; Angels and Demons by Dan Brown; Collected Poems by Philip Larkin; Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham; King Dork by Frank Portman; Norwood by Charles Portis; Gringos by Charles Portis; Contempt by Alberto Moravia; The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald; The Getaway by Jim Thompson; Factotum by Charles Bukowski; Human Oddities by Noria Jablonski; The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett; Post Office by Charles Bukowski; The Known World by Edward P. Jones; In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar; The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills by Charles Bukowski; Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow; Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson; Warlock by Oakley Hall; Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski; Veronica by Mary Gaitskill; True Grit by Charles Portis; Birds of Los Angeles by Wendy S. Walters; Misery by Stephen King; Burning in Water Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski. Some books I read recently that I like a lot are: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson; Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder; Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy; The Road by Cormac McCarthy; Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier; Citizen Vince by Jess Walter; Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard; Youth by J.M. Coetzee; The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright; What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank; The Deep Blue Good-by and Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald; The Night Gardener, Drama City and Shoedog by George Pelecanos

Heroes:

A.C. Newman

My Blog

Reading Friday, June 20

Friday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.2nd Draft Reading SeriesRoots & Vines Cafe409 Grand Street at ClintonNew York, NYreading with Liza Monroy, author of the novel Mexican High, which is coming out June 10...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Thu, 29 May 2008 08:38:00 PST

Draw me a picture when youre high

More of me playing rock songs, if you can stand it. This is a few years after Fletcher, a band I was in called So This Is Outer Space. The bio on the Leon’s Temple page, provided by Brian the dr...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:02:00 PST

Reading Thursday, April 10

I’ll be reading at the Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Reading Series on Thursday, April 10. The reading is at Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street, on New York’s famous Lower East Side.I&rsquo...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:17:00 PST

It was pretty fun, it was neat, three days

There's a website called Leon's Temple that archives music made by Kalamazoo bands in the high old college/alternative rock days. There were a shitload of bands in Kalamazoo then, especially in the co...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:24:00 PST

Two sips from the cup of human kindness and I’m shitfaced

1.The summer after eighth grade my mom put me in touch with a woman she knew who was looking for someone to mow her lawn. She thought it'd be good for me to get out there and make a little money, I gu...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:30:00 PST

Hate your enemies, save your friends, find your place, speak the truth

1.On this day in 1993 I went to Wings Stadium in Kalamazoo MI and saw the rock band Nirvana. A couple of weeks earlier I'd gotten a bad case of mono, had to skip a week of classes and rotate to my fol...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:33:00 PST

It's been so long since I've been suitably high

1i dont like crowds. i dont like hanging out. i'd rather be in my apartment or with one or two other people at an empty bar. i like drinking alone and listening to music. to me that's a lot of fun but...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:40:00 PST

tell me, boy, now wouldn't that be sweet?

last fall i went to an artists' colony in New Hampshire called MacDowell. i stayed in a cabin in the woods and worked on my new book. at the end of the day i went up to Colony Hall, the main lodge, an...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Fri, 11 May 2007 06:10:00 PST

I know the medical world could knock you out

Hello, just a quick thing, there's a great series of books published by Continuum called 33 1/3, I'm sure many of you have seen them, they're the little pocket-sized books and each book is devoted ent...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:06:00 PST

Reviews of Things That Came Out a While Ago: Part One

Now I will talk about the Killers' album Hot Fuss. on thanksgiving 2004 i went over to Erin and Stephen's and this dude named teich was there and he loves all the big KROQ-style modern rock hits and i...
Posted by Bryan Charles on Sun, 18 Feb 2007 05:27:00 PST