Pixels of Young Mueller – Jerry Schwartz

Poem: Reflecting Back

November 21, 2016January 16, 2015 by Jerry Schwartz

Reflecting Back

When I was a boy I was emblazed
In imagery galore.
I’d lay down a mirror and for hours gaze
At my little square hole in the floor.

I peered into the room I’d made,
Examined its every side.
Always to left or right I stayed
So wouldn’t see me inside.

How I played that wondering game
With its magicurious feeling,
Trying in vain to be in the same
Room with the floor for a ceiling.

Such is dismay in a dreaming child’s head
He sees it but never can show it.
Like a million sayings that can’t be said,
Such is the pain of the poet.

From Pixels of Young Mueller

Poem: The Window Washers

November 21, 2016October 16, 2014 by Jerry Schwartz

Window Washers

In Pixels of Young Mueller, Klaus Mueller scribbles a small poem in his journal. The words pay tribute to the men who dangle from Chicago’s skyscrapers in an effort to rid the city of dirty windows:

Like spiders the window washers
rappel themselves
toward the taxi sea

Pixels of Young Mueller: Kindle Audio Sample

July 7, 2018September 15, 2014 by Jerry Schwartz

pixels-on-kindle

Here is an unenhanced audio sample from my novel, Pixels of Young Mueller, as read by the Kindle’s default male voice at normal speed (you can read along). As you can hear, the feature needs improving, but it would suffice if I preferred listening to books over reading them.

Fictional Characters Bearing Their Creators’ Names

November 21, 2016August 21, 2014 by Jerry Schwartz

Sarah Crown posted an interesting bit in The Guardian’s books blog, “Is auto-fiction strictly a boys’ game?” The subject was the phenomenon of authors who insert a character bearing their name into their work. It turns out that a number of books—both new and not so new—have used this device, a fact that interested me greatly, as I used it in my novel, Pixels of Young Mueller. I have compiled this list of books from the article:

Jonathan Coe (The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim)
Damon Galgut (In a Strange Room)
Geoff Dyer (Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi)
Will Self (Will Self Walking to Hollywood)
Michel Houellebecq (La Carte et le Territoire)
Alberto Manguel (All Men Are Liars)
Philip Roth (Operation Shylock)
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated)
E. L. Doctorow (World’s Fair)
Frederick Exley (A Fan’s Notes)
Vladimir Nabokov (Pnin)
Amelie Nothomb (Une forme de vie)
Gertrude Stein (Autobiography of Alice B Toklas)

Readers familiar with my novel know that its main character, Klaus Mueller, creates a fictional character named Jerry Schwartz. I knew that I could not have been the first to do this, but I was not aware of any specific instances in which it had been done. Fortunately, Sarah Crown has come to the rescue, and while I don’t agree with her use of “auto-fiction” to describe the literary device itself, I applaud her efforts.