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Alfred Chester
(September 7, 1928 - August 1, 1971) USA

Alfred Chester

Writer

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Alfred Chester was born in Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York. X-rays used to treat childhood illness left him bald, and he wore a wig, which though noticeable was not something that people felt comfortable mentioning. He was educated at Orthodox Jewish yeshiva. He attended New York University. He attended graduate school at Columbia University but dropped out.

He lived in France for most of the 1950s as an openly gay man. In 1952 his essay "Silence in Heaven" was published in Marguerite Caetani's literary review Botteghe oscure . Chester wrote a pornographic novel, Chariot of Flesh , for Olympia Press, using the pseudonym Malcolm Nesbit.

His first collection of short stories, Here Be Dragons , was published in 1955. His novel Jamie Is My Heart's Desire was initially published in a French translation, then in an English edition by the British publisher André Deutsch, and only later appeared in the United States. With Caetani's support, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957. His short story "As I Was Going Up the Stair" was included in Best American Short Stories.

Starting in 1959, his short fiction was published invarious magazines. He returned to the United States and met Susan Sontag through Harriet Sohmers and María Irene Fornés. Chester moved to Morocco in 1963. His short story collection Behold Goliath was published in 1964, and his novel The Exquisite Corpse was published in 1967.

He associated with Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles while in Morocco, but eventually fell out with both of them. Increasingly, his behaviour was made erratic by a combination of mental illness and drug use. He died in Israel in 1971. His later writing was published posthumously in collections such as Looking for Genet.

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Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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