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Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 438
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 27, 2005 - 07:04 pm: | 
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Hello All,
I know long time no hear from. It's good to be back, even for a short while. Now everything that aint suppose to be here can leave. *eyebrow raised*
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know I did. For those of you who don't know, the reason for my long absence is that I'm back in school again, getting a second degree. I aint built for this sh_t, no mo. *LOL* Anyway, we, the school, did not have a fall October break like everyone else. We only got the week of Thanksgiving off. So, I haven't been able to read any fiction until now. And between us, one of the two that I did read SUCKED! So, let me tell you about the one that I absolutely love and strongly recommend.
John Crow's Devil by Marlon James is da BOMB! I'm going to give you a picture of the cover.
All I can say is buy da damn book! James is a talent to be lifted up.
Now, I'm going to give you three books to look out for in the near future. The first one is out now, and its the short story collection White Rat by Gayl Jones.
It has been a hellafied long ass-ted time since we have read anything new from Jones, but thanks to Harlem Moon, they have decided to re-publish Jones long out of print short story collection White Rat. I have been looking for this collection for a number of years. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when it came across my desk. There is a God sitting on his throne in Heaven and He loves ME cause I got White Rat! I can't wait to get in it!
Next, one of my favorite authors of all time J. Califronia Cooper has a new collection coming out in April titled Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns (catchy title aint it?).
Next, my girl Bernice McFadden has a new one coming out in February titled Nowhere is a Place. Check it out.
Sorry for the hit and run, but I have to go and return to the land of circuit analysis and digital fundamentals, at least for a couple more weeks. At least this time around, I don't have to pay for my college degree. I love gettin' free sh_t! Then I'll be back with Tracy Price-Thompson latest novel, as well as the Bruce Bruce biography and Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor edited by Paul Beatty. Now where in the hell he been? Plus a few others. |
Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 196
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 01:41 am: |
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Hey, Thumper. Hope all is well, nice to hear from you man, what the haps be's like (and do)?
A couple of books I've had my eye on:
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead -- Possibly my 2nd favorite writer. I ordered an Advance Reader's Copy.
The Whale Caller by Zakes Mda -- Ditto. His quirkiest book yet?
Mozart and Leadbelly by Ernest Gaines -- I smell some catfish, might have to check this one.
Mirror on America -- The autobiography of John Hope Franklin. Heard him on Book-TV last weekend talking about William Styron's "depth of reasearch" on Nat Turner! LOL! I'd like to check this one out, hope my library gets it in.
Have never read Gayl Jones, Bernice McFadden, or J. California Cooper.
Thanks,
Peace |
Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 197
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 02:07 am: |
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PS Thumper, I just reread Michael Ondaatje's "Coming Through Slaughter," about early jazz great Buddy Bolden. It's a quick read, only 150 pages, and very poetic.
Passing wet chicory that lies in the field like the sky.
It really connected with me this time. Btw, I found out that Slaughter, Louisiana is a small town just north of Baton Rouge which the funeral procession goes through. I think you might like it man. It's biograpical fiction, but it creates a mood. Thanks,
steve
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Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 445
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2005 - 12:22 pm: |
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Hello Steve,
I heard Ernest Gaines had a new collection out. As soon as I am done with finals...
I tried reading Zakes Mda before, he didn't grab me. In all fairness it could have been my mood too.
Now Colson, I love his work and his style. I look forward to reading his new one.
The John Hope Franklin book sounds interesting. I did not realize that he discussed Styron's Nat Turner book. I read Styron's book a few years ago and LOVED IT! From my understanding there is still some major controversy surrounding that book, like if Styron was the correct person to write it seeing as how he's white. Very interesting stuff, but I thought the book was MARVELOUS! Too bad you're not near Indy, I would lend you my copy.
Thanks for the Slaughter suggestion. I may have to get the book. Hey, did you hear that Mary J. Blige has signed on to play Nina Simone in a movie? Talk about something that gave me pause. |
Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 203
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 09:03 pm: |
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Hey Thumper, I wish you all the best with your studies.
Anyway, thanks a lot for your opinion on Styron's Nat Turner. I can always count on you to tell it like it is! I heard the same opinion from Anita who sometimes posts on this board, who, by the way, is a very gifted writer. I haven't read it, but I have a copy and I intend to read it.
Earlier this year I read a book called The Rebellious Slave by Scot French (a relatively young white historian/guy who's the associate director of the Carter G. Woodson Center for African American Studies at the University of Viginia). It includes just about everything you would ever want to know about Nat Turner except the fact that in the 1990s both Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West more or less endorsed Styron's book and attributed the controversy at the time to the excesses of that period. And Spike Lee had talked about doing a movie based on Styron's novel. But to me, Scot French's ommission of these details speaks louder than anything in the book. I think I can understand why, after reading Catherine Clinton's essay "Contents Under Pressure," about her experience as one of 2 white women in the Harvard black studies program (and the other woman was sleeping with everybody). She's recently published a biography of Harriet Tubman.
Last year Kenneth Greenberg published an anthology about Nat Turner, which includes a piece by Alvin Toussaint, professor of psychology at Harvard and one of the original contributors to "William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond," and it sounds like he's still ticked off, so I may have to read that interview too. But at the time, John Hope Franklin and James Baldwin were the two major defenders of Styron's book. On the Book-TV program, an audience member asked if either he or George Washington Williams (the 19th century scholar who's the subject of one of his biographies) had ever done any research on Nat Turner, and he replied that he's read the basic documents but he said that the interested (he called it a "fad") in Nat Turner is fairly recent and that G.W. Williams was not in a position to have done any in-depth research on the subject, as William Styron had. So I'll be curious to read the book. But from what I understand, the controversy was based on the relatively new idea of black history as the cultural "property" of African Americans.
No, I hadn't heard about the Nina Simone movie, that's interesting. It's also really interesting that John Hope Franklin didn't miss a step in the interview I watched, just as Albert Murray, who's about to turn 90 in May, wrote his @ss off in his recent novel.
Thanks, Always nice to hear from ya,
steve |
Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 204
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 09:20 pm: |
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thumper,
Just want to add that I'm almost finished with "Melville: His Life and Work," the new biography by Andrew Delbanco, which is fairly brief (only about 320 pages plus notes), very accessible, and interprets Moby-Dick in a way that seems very compatible with the interpretations of black scholars like Trinidadian C.L.R. James and even Stanley Crouch, who, incidentally, recently appeared with Delbanco and 2 other writers in a panel discussion at the 92nd St. "Y" in NYC. I think the author does an excellent job explaining the novel as a historical allegory of the pre-Civil War period.
When I'm finished with that I plan to read "The Tambourine in Glory: African Culture and Melville's Art," a 40-page essay by Sterling Stuckey, which I discovered in an anthology at the library.
Well you can see why a novel called The Whale Caller (Zakes Mda's new book) might appeal to me about now! |
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