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 in magazines such as
The New Yorker,
Esquire, and
Transatlantic Review. His often virulent literary criticism appeared in the
New York Review of Books,
Partisan Review, and
Commentary. 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. == Later life ==