With the exception of "The Man Child," a macabre, faintly Lawrentian study of repressed love between two white men in the rural South, all of Baldwin's tales here deal in one form or another with the Negro problem. Technically, a good portion of the work is crude and unconvincing. "Come Out the Wilderness" and "Previous Condition," for example, rest on slight themes: the first concerning a Negro girl's hapless involvement with an opportunistic white Village artist, and the second presenting the frustrations of a Negro actor when he is denied lodgings in a white neighborhood. "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" is an ironic mood piece, a chronicle of a Negro expatriate in Paris: on the verge of fame and fearful of returning to the states, the singer discovers that his friend, a Tunisian outcast, is not above stealing from people of his own race. "Sonny's Blues" is an over-long, over-loud lament of a doomed jazz musician who becomes a junkie, ending on a muted moment of recognition between himself and his square brother. "The Rockpile" is a brief , bitter account of children blighted by Harlem family life. The title story is reminiscent of Baldwin's recent play Blues for Mr. Charlie; the white protagonistThe Amen Carner is a much better play than Blues for Mister Charlie, which was Baldwin at his agit-prop worst. Perhaps its superiority is due to the time of composition, right after Baldwin's best novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, with which it has a sibling relation. What we find in Baldwin's early work is an impassioned hurt and poignancy, a lyric openness to his terrible past and the impugned humanity of the Negro, which the headier, later confections like Another Country and the more pamphleteering pages of The Fire Next Time seem to have escalated into a pompous, all-purpose revanchist rhetoric. True, The Amen Corner is old-fashioned, even homey, theatrically speaking: but its central character, the store-front Harlem evangelist, Sister Margaret, a "fiery, fast-talking, little black woman," unexpectedly shattered by the return of a husband she never understood and the disaffection of a son she presumed to understand too well, is a beautiful, moving, and often heart-breaking creation, a figure of real yearnings and consequence rarely placed on the Broadway stage. Unfortunately, The Amen Corner was not a success when it was finally performed here a few seasons ago. Probably the gospel-singing atmosphere, the wonderfully modulated idiomatic speeches, and the genuine sentiments expressed alienated the vogue-hungry New York audiences. The loss is theirs., a deputy sheriff, is momentarily impotent until aroused by a terrible memory: as a boy, he witnessed, along with his gloating parents and other adults, the brutal castration and burning of an uppity Negro. All of these tales have an undeniable urgency, power and anger, yet only "The Outing" achieves true artistry, probably because it is the most personal and not melodramatic at all. Symphonic in structure, mixing religious and sexual motifs, encompassing various shades of characters and situations against the background of a boat trip up the Hudson, "The Outing" is memorable in every sense; funny, sad, colorful, it is a triumphant performance.
Pub Date: June 12, 1967
ISBN: 0375701885
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1967
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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