Charles Bock

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Charles Bock

Born 1970
Las Vegas, Nevada
Occupation novelist
Nationality Flag of the United States United States
Genres contemporary fiction
Official website

Charles Bock (born 1970) is an American writer whose debut 2008 novel was published by Random House. He lives in New York, with his wife and dog.

[edit] Biography

Bock was born and raised in Las Vegas, which served as the setting for Beautiful Children. He comes from a family of pawnbrokers who've operated pawn shops in downtown Las Vegas for more than thirty years. On his website, he reflects upon his upbringing as a source of inspiration for the novel:

"Sometimes, when my siblings and I were little, my parents, for various reasons, used to have us stay in the back of the shop. This would be after school or during summer vacation, when there wasn’t summer camp, or they didn’t have anybody to watch over us and we were too small to be alone. We’d occupy our time with sodas from a nearby casino’s gift shop, comic books, and a television that got wavy reception, and we’d do small chores, rolling coins or filing the previous day’s pawn tickets. The store often had a line of people waiting to pawn their goods, local customers who worked in casinos and also spent all their spare time playing blackjack and slot machines, and also tourists who had blown all their cash, and maybe their plane tickets home, and now were desperate, and hung over, and needed loans on their wedding rings, so they could go back into the casinos and win back their money. I’d sometimes stare out of the back of the store and watch the people in line and take in their faces. Lots of times my parents would be put in the position of having to tell these people that their wedding ring was only worth a fraction of what they’d paid for it, or that, say, the diamonds in that ring were brown and flawed. From the back of the store, I’d watch as the customers exploded and called my parents dirty Jews and cursed at them and threatened them at the top of their lungs. It’s impossible in situations like that not to feel for everybody involved — to be horrified, sure, but more than that, to be saddened by the spectacle, to want so much more than that out of life for everyone."[1]

Bock earned a Master's of Fine Arts in fiction and literature from Bennington College and has taught fiction at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City. His short fiction has been published in Esquire Magazine.

[edit] References

  1. ^ A few words from Charles. Beautifulchildren.net. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME Bock, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Novelist
DATE OF BIRTH 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Las Vegas, Nevada
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Languages