Every couple of decades or so, we need to be reminded of what made writers like Toni Morrison call Henry Dumas a genius.
The work of a late, lamented, and influential icon of the 1960s Black Arts Movement is brought back into print to connect with a post-millennial Black Lives Matter generations of readers—and writers.
Dumas was two months shy of his 34th birthday when, in May 1968, he was shot and killed by a New York Transit Authority policeman in what was judged a case of mistaken identity. By that time, the Arkansas-born writer had already become something of a cult legend for his poetry and fiction, steeped in folkloric imagery, magical realism, and a haunting, deeply evocative lyricism that was near music. His short stories were posthumously collected in two volumes edited by his friend and de facto literary executor Redmond, and this book contains all those stories as well as some previously uncollected ones. Whether you’re already familiar with Dumas or are just encountering him for the first time, such pieces as the title story, “A Boll of Roses,” and the much-anthologized classic “Ark of Bones” administer a shock of recognition of how, at such a relatively early point in his career, Dumas achieved near mastery of narrative form, whether the gothic horror of “Rope of Wind,” the allegorical cunning of “The University of Man,” or the unsettling bare-bones naturalism of “The Crossing.” Most of the stories deal with the raw-nerve perils and spiritual crises that come from growing up in the rural South while others, such as “Harlem,” engage the hair-trigger tension of Black urban life in midcentury America. And there are times, as in “Devil Bird,” when Dumas’ phantasmagorical and metaphysical tendencies merge into wild and wicked farce. For all these stories’ spellbinding attributes, some of them seem to trail off as if waiting for yet another draft to amplify or add on to their details. The newer stories seem like variations, even repetitions of previous themes. And yet, the last story, “The Metagenesis of Sunra,” a tour de force of creation mythology and cosmic improvisation, submits yet another jolt of discovery, suggesting how Dumas, who always seemed ahead of his own, albeit brief, time, was capable of advancing African American storytelling art even further than one previously suspected.
Every couple of decades or so, we need to be reminded of what made writers like Toni Morrison call Henry Dumas a genius.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-56689-607-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
A nervy modern-day rebellion tale that isn’t afraid to get dark or find humor in the darkness.
A young New York woman figures there’s nothing wrong with existence that a fistful of prescriptions and months of napping wouldn’t fix.
Moshfegh’s prickly fourth book (Homesick for Another World, 2017, etc.) is narrated by an unnamed woman who’s decided to spend a year “hibernating.” She has a few conventional grief issues. (Her parents are both dead, and they’re much on her mind.) And if she’s not mentally ill, she’s certainly severely maladjusted socially. (She quits her job at an art gallery in obnoxious, scatological fashion.) But Moshfegh isn’t interested in grief or mental illness per se. Instead, she means to explore whether there are paths to living that don’t involve traditional (and wearying) habits of consumption, production, and relationships. To highlight that point, most of the people in the narrator's life are offbeat or provisional figures: Reva, her well-meaning but shallow former classmate; Trevor, a boyfriend who only pursues her when he’s on the rebound; and Dr. Tuttle, a wildly incompetent doctor who freely gives random pill samples and presses one drug, Infermiterol, that produces three-day blackouts. None of which is the stuff of comedy. But Moshfegh has a keen sense of everyday absurdities, a deadpan delivery, and such a well-honed sense of irony that the narrator’s predicament never feels tragic; this may be the finest existential novel not written by a French author. (Recovering from one blackout, the narrator thinks, “What had I done? Spent a spa day then gone out clubbing?...Had Reva convinced me to go ‘enjoy myself’ or something just as idiotic?”) Checking out of society the way the narrator does isn’t advisable, but there’s still a peculiar kind of uplift to the story in how it urges second-guessing the nature of our attachments while revealing how hard it is to break them.
A nervy modern-day rebellion tale that isn’t afraid to get dark or find humor in the darkness.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52211-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
A remarkably enjoyable visit with the annoying one percent, as close to crazy rich WASPs as WASPs can get.
Money makes the world go round, particularly the world of an elite Brooklyn family.
"On good days, Sasha could acknowledge how incredibly lucky she was to live in her house. It was a four-story Brooklyn limestone, a massive, formal palace that could have held ten of the one-bedroom apartments Sasha had lived in before. But on bad days...." As Sasha finally admits in a gloves-off monologue following a gender reveal party gone awry, on bad days, it's "a janky Grey Gardens full of old toothbrushes and moldy baskets." A wealthier cousin of Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest, Knopf editor Jackson's fiction debut is a comedy of manners charting the fates of the Stockton siblings and their spouses, circling around the house where they grew up in Brooklyn Heights, now inhabited by Cord and his wife, Sasha, who is referred to as the Gold Digger by Cord's sisters, Darley and Georgiana. That's unfair, though: Sasha signed a prenup. Meanwhile, Darley and her husband, Malcolm, a Korean American aviation-industry analyst who did not sign a prenup, are living off their own money as Darley fights the tedium of the entitled mommy lifestyle. Georgiana, much younger than her siblings, still single, is considered the do-gooder of the family because she works for a nonprofit, where she becomes involved in a passionate and very ill-advised relationship. From the opening scene, where Sasha's mother-in-law shows up to dinner with an entire replacement menu and a revised "tablescape," Jackson has a deft hand with all the passive-aggressive interactions that are so common in family life, perhaps particularly in this socio-economic stratum. She knows her party themes, her tennis clubs, her silent auctions, and her WASP family dynamics. Rich-people jokes, cultural acuity, and entertaining banter keep this novel moving at a sprightly pace as the characters learn their lessons about money and morals, though some of the virtuous reform seems a little much.
A remarkably enjoyable visit with the annoying one percent, as close to crazy rich WASPs as WASPs can get.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-59-349069-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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