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Alfred Chester, the youngest of three children, was born on September 7,
1928, in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Jake, a Jewish furrier and proprietor
of the Alfred Fur Company, came to the United States as a child from Romania,
his family name Americanized from Chesta-Polchak or Chestya-Pelski by
immigration authorities. His mother, Anna Chester, was born in Odessa. Chester
is reported to have had a comfortable childhood, despite the Great Depression
and his status as the son of an immigrant. |
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Chester's central literary theme, of otherness or isolation, is thought
to have been fostered by an illness which struck him in his seventh year,
resulting in hair loss. Lack of eyelashes, eyebrows, head and body hair created
an awkward appearance which Chester refused to publicly acknowledge, even to
close friends. Although his Jewish background did not seem to create personal
conflict, his artistic sensibility, homosexuality, and appearance did. The
orange, bedraggled wig coupled with denial of his physical condition that
persisted until the age of 36, made him feel and look the part of the
outsider. |
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In 1945, Chester enrolled in Washington Square College of the New York
University, contributing to
Compass,"Varieties," and
Apprentice (all NYU publications), and took
his B.A. in English in 1949. He attempted graduate study at Columbia
University, but abandoned it in 1950 and began travelling, first with a short
visit in Mexico. Then, armed with a collection of completed short stories, he
moved on to France, and eventually to Morocco. His French foray lasted the
better part of the 1950s--and established Chester as a familiar cafe presence,
providing him the opportunity to discover and shape his style and craft, and to
meet with publishers and other literary minds including Carson McCullers, Mary
Louise Aswell, James Baldwin, Richard Seaver, Robert Silvers, and Princess
Marguerite Caetani. |
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Chester's association and extensive correspondence with Princess Caetani
resulted in publication of his essay
"Silence in Heaven" in
Botteghe Oscure in 1952, followed in that
same year by publication of the Southern-Gothic short story
"Dance for Dead Lovers" in
Merlin. Chester's eccentric, existential
works, a popular style in the mid-50s, attracted attention. The publication of
a collection of short stories, sold by subscription by the Silver's Editions
Finisterre in Paris, garnered him the recognition of V.S. Pritchett of the BBC
who called Chester "an exciting talent: original, fearless
and very capable." The Paris publishing house, Editions du Seuil and soon
afterwards, Andre Deutch Limited of London, published Chester's first novel,
Jamie Is My Heart's Desire, in French and
English respectively. The novel, introduced in New York by The Vanguard Press
in 1957, created little fanfare in America as the public's current taste
favored a more realistic writing style. However, his somewhat lackluster
American debut was offset by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957 and publication of
the short story,
"As I Was Going Up the Stair," which received
the honor of inclusion in
The Best American Short Stories. |
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In 1959 the
New Yorker purchased his short story,
"A War on Salamis," which financed Chester's
return to the United States. In 1961 Chester's short story
"Cradle Song" was published in
Esquire magazine and printed in
The Best American Short Stories,'61. Chester
finally began to enjoy a measure of popularity, and was published in the
Transatlantic Review and
Provincetown Review. However it was not for
his fiction that Chester would be recognized. |
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Alfred Chester ultimately gained notoriety in America for literary
criticism. His critical works, published in the
New York Review of Books, Partisan Review, and
Commentary, along with a regular column in
Book Week, established his reputation, and
he was hailed for his authoritative voice and clear literary vision by popular
figures such as Gore Vidal. Although he reluctantly continued his critical
writing for financial reasons, Chester returned to Morocco in June 1963 to
remove himself from the New York literary scene and concentrate on writing
fiction. The publication of
Behold Goliath (1964) and
The Exquisite Corpse (an experimental novel
eventually published in 1967), generally disappointed and confused reviewers
and the literary public. |
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Coinciding with the pervasive influence of Paul and Jane Bowles during
Chester's Moroccan years (1963-1965), Chester's productivity dropped and his
mental health suffered. His forced expulsion by Moroccan authorities in 1965,
due to his extremely erratic behavior, landed him back in New York. His
remaining literary contributions, written during a period charcterized by
increasing dementia and geographical wandering until his death in 1971,
consisted of a few short stories, semi-autobiographical essays, and fiction
collected in
"The Foot," and the clearly autobiographical
"Letter from Wandering Jew," an account of his
travels to Israel (collected in
Looking for Genet). |
