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Books Sandwiched In: Virtual Author Talks at Noon

Melanie Chartoff - Odd Woman Out

Join us as Melanie Chartoff discusses her book, Odd Woman Out: Exposure in Essays and Stories. **This book contains adult themes that might not be suitable for younger readers.**

Join us on Zoom using this link: https://zoom.us/j/93594082846

For more information contact Rory Martorana at rmartorana@nhfpl.org or call 203-946-2283.

Beginning as an actor On and Off Broadway, Melanie Chartoff is best known for the characters she created on Fridays, Seinfeld, Newhart, and Rugrats. Recently published in McSweeney's, Medium, Entropy, Purple Clover, The Jewish Journal, Funny Times, Five on the Fifth, Glint, Entropy, Verdad, Bluestem, Evening Street Press, Mused, Jewlarious, Defenestration, Better after 50, Living the Second Act, and three editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Odd Woman Out: Exposure in Essays and Stories is her first book.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Go backstage on Broadway, behind the scenes on network television, and inside the complicated psyche of a talented performer struggling to play the role of a complete human. Odd Woman Out intimately exposes the nature of identity in the life of a performing artist, snapshotting the hopeful search for a self Chartoff could love, and someone else's self to love, too.

Trying to crawl inside the television set to get her parents' attention, she got blocked by all the tubes and wires. So she had to go the long way around to get herself onscreen. In a series of essays and stories, Chartoff explores her ambition, artistry and love blunders in her hilarious, heartbreaking and hopeful new memoir.

From her 1950s childhood in a suburb she describes as an "abusement park," to performing Molière on Broadway, to voicing characters on the popular "Rugrats" cartoon series, Melanie Chartoff was anxious "out of character"; preferring any imaginary world to her real one. Obsessed with exploring her talent and mastering craft, fame came as a destabilizing byproduct.

Suppressing a spiritual breakdown while co-starring on a late-night comedy show, Chartoff grew more estranged from whoever she was meant to be. But given a private audience with a guru, she finally heard her inner voice, played by '70s soul singer Barry White, crooning, "Get out, baby!"; All the while, she's courted by men with homing pigeons and Priuses, idealized by guys who want the girl du jour from TV to be their baby rearer or kidney donor.

(This book contains adult themes and may not be suitable for younger readers.)