Ask the Author: Charles S. Isaacs
Answered Questions (4)
Charles S. Isaacs
AVENGING ANGEL: Love & Death in Old Brooklyn
(Currently looking for an agent)
(Currently looking for an agent)
Charles S. Isaacs
Almost 50 years ago, I was deeply involved in a historic, racially charged conflict in New York City. I always felt that the standard history of that controversy was biased and slanted against the black community, but didn’t know what I could do about it. Then, in 2011, a historian interviewed me for an oral history he was putting together. This prompted me to pull out my old files, refresh my memories, and take another look at the books that had been written about the episode. This made me angry enough to write my own book: "Inside Ocean Hill-Brownsville," a combination of history, analysis and memoir.
Charles S. Isaacs
I can’t recall ever suffering from writer’s block. Whenever I did get stuck in plot situations, I stopped writing and went to the gym. Almost invariably, I came back with a couple of chapters in my head.
Charles S. Isaacs
My first book was a history/memoir/analysis of the New York City’s racially charged school wars of the 1960s, which led to the longest teacher strike in American history. Shortly after it was published, I got the idea of writing about living through the Antiwar Movement of the same era. To make it more accessible to Americans, who seem to be largely unenthusiastic about anything that happened more than three weeks ago, I decided to have the story told by a fictional narrator. I’ve been writing various things for about 50 years, but this was my first attempt at a novel. I had no idea what kind of adventure I was embarking on.
I started off with an “everyman” character named Steve, who starts college in 1967. One thing led to another and, before long, he introduced me to a whole cast of imaginary friends. Almost immediately, to my great surprise, they took over writing the story. It seemed I was typing what the voices in my head were dictating. (By the way, I may be a little crazy, but never before had I heard voices in my head.)
The result was nothing like what I’d intended. The history stayed in, and I was meticulous about its accuracy. (In fact, this is the only novel I’ve ever seen that has an Index of Actual Persons at the end.) But that became the background. To the fore came, of all things, a love story, the tale of a young, interracial couple, finding each other and finding out about themselves as well, while they navigate their way through the Antiwar and Black Liberation Movements and all the social turmoil of the late 1960s.
It turned out, by the way, that Steve had some deep psychological issues to deal with, on top of everything else.
I think it’s a pretty good story, and just wish I could take credit for writing it myself. In any case, putting it on paper was great fun from the first word to the very last. My hope is that its readers enjoy it as much as I did.
I started off with an “everyman” character named Steve, who starts college in 1967. One thing led to another and, before long, he introduced me to a whole cast of imaginary friends. Almost immediately, to my great surprise, they took over writing the story. It seemed I was typing what the voices in my head were dictating. (By the way, I may be a little crazy, but never before had I heard voices in my head.)
The result was nothing like what I’d intended. The history stayed in, and I was meticulous about its accuracy. (In fact, this is the only novel I’ve ever seen that has an Index of Actual Persons at the end.) But that became the background. To the fore came, of all things, a love story, the tale of a young, interracial couple, finding each other and finding out about themselves as well, while they navigate their way through the Antiwar and Black Liberation Movements and all the social turmoil of the late 1960s.
It turned out, by the way, that Steve had some deep psychological issues to deal with, on top of everything else.
I think it’s a pretty good story, and just wish I could take credit for writing it myself. In any case, putting it on paper was great fun from the first word to the very last. My hope is that its readers enjoy it as much as I did.
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