Charlie Citrine

Charlie is the central character of Humboldt's Gift, as well as the narrator. Much of the action in the novel takes place in Charlie's mind in the form of memories, speculations and flashbacks. As a young man in Chicago, Charlie becomes enamored of Von Humboldt Fleischer, a New York poet who authored an anthology of his work entitled The Harlequin Ballads, which was immediately successful and skyrocketed Humboldt to temporary fame. Charlie borrows money from his high-school sweetheart, Naomi Scheldt, and runs off to Greenwich Village to follow his new mentor, Humboldt. The older poet takes to the young man, and for a while, they live the idyllic life of bohemian Marxists, carousing, drinking, loving, creating and - above all - thinking and rapping about lofty thoughts with New York's literati.

Eventually, when Humboldt's fame begins to falter, the poet agrees to go to Princeton to take...