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Kc_trudiva
Newbie Poster
Username: Kc_trudiva
Post Number: 25
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 07:41 am: | 
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i just finished reading The Man In My Basement by Walter Mosley. this is third novel i've read by him, the first two being Six Easy Pieces and Fear Itself. i enjoyed this one most.
has anyone read it? the story was so...weird in a sense. a synopsis: a white man goes to a black man asking to rent his basement, but the basement is not for rent. the white man makes the black man a lucrative offer and the black man accepts. the white man wants to be locked up in the black man's basement in a replica of a jail cell and wants the black man to be his warden.
i could go on, but i need to dialogue with someone else about this one. let me hear your thoughts. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 154
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 10:12 am: |
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I read it. It worked for me as an allegory of one aspect of the racial situation in America--ie, by imprisoning black people with racism, white people become imprisoned themselves. I looked at it sort of like that Kafka story, the Metamorphosis, not as anything that would happen really.
That said, I think that it should have gone a little deeper--seems to me that Moseley has good ideas, with his sci fi and this book, but he has gotten used to the pace and length and method of the detective thriller, which emphasizes plot and movement. I would have liked to have seen a Ralph Ellison or a John Edgar Wideman take this idea and run with it. |
Kc_trudiva
Regular Poster
Username: Kc_trudiva
Post Number: 27
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 10:57 am: |
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chrishayden,
i never get it when one calls a story "allegory." i mean doesn't that mean that it's a generalization of a certain subject? so i would interpret your response to mean he was "generally" speaking (writing) about a particular racial situation.
considering i've never read anything by Wideman and the one book i tried to read by Ellison i put down, i can't agree or disagree with your last statement. perhaps i need to broaden my reading horizon and incorporate more thought provoking novels...
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 155
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 11:05 am: |
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Kc:
No an allegory is like a parable or one of Aesop's fables--it is a story that is really about something else--the most famous one being the Allegory of the Cave, which, though it features people chained up in a cave is really a story about how a person who sees and knows the truth is much like a free person in the light trying to describe what he sees to people shackled in darkness.
This story makes no sense when you take it as face value--how likely is some white man who has done what this one has likely to do this? Not very. But when you consider him as a symbol of white society (what tipped me was his adoption of contact lenses, etc to disquise the fact that he was not really an Anglo) and his imprisonment as symbolic and their confrontation as symbolic then it makes more sense. Have you ever read Kafka.
From that standpoint, one can see how the black man punishing the white man, keeping him a prisoner, made him a prisoner too.
Re Wideman or Ellison it is a personal taste. This might have worked just as well for most people as it is.
Those writers do work you. But it is worth it--it not only broadens your reading horizons but strengthens your powers to read and enjoy all kinds of literature. |
Kc_trudiva
Regular Poster
Username: Kc_trudiva
Post Number: 30
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 11:11 am: |
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chris: okay. i see and now understand the allegory of the story and agree. i generally like thought provoking novels and shy away from the contemporary novels that are inudating the market. i will have to pick up Kafka and see what it's about. thanks. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 196
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 12:14 pm: |
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there was an earlier thread a few months ago:
http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/1/727.html?1075859749 |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 197
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 12:15 pm: |
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actually, as i reread it, it may not be helpful...i think there is another thread that is more informative... |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 158
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 12:56 pm: |
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Kc--Be forewarned--Kafka is early 20th century surrealism. The Metamorphosis is about a man who awakes one day to find that he is a giant insect--it is an examination of alienation and Kafka's own personality problems |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 201
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 02:16 pm: |
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Kc_trudiva: Read Kafka after you read the an african american allegory...Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 291
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 - 03:24 pm: |
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I read this book and came to the conclusion that it had to be read on several levels. The characters did seem to be personifications of ideas rather than 3 dimensional people. But the the ideas they symbolized were atypical. |
Kc_trudiva
Regular Poster
Username: Kc_trudiva
Post Number: 34
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 07:04 am: |
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cynique,
what ideas did you believe the characters were personifying that "were atypical?" judging by your post, i KNOW i read the book on a totally different level...and it's interesting to read each take on the book. share your thoughts. |
Akaivyleaf
Regular Poster
Username: Akaivyleaf
Post Number: 47
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 01:15 pm: |
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trudiva... You're going to read Kafka? My hat is off to you. I had to read him in college many years ago and while facinated with the metamorphisis, I found it so totally out of the scope of my imagination at the time. The time period to which it was written had a lot to do with the book and plus he didn't have all of his marbles it was later proven.
I like allegorical writing, it makes the reader think outside of the words that are written and really involve the story with perception. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 299
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 01:41 pm: |
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Well, first of all, kc-trudiva, as I said when the book was discussed in another thread a while back, to me, on one level it had a Toni Morrison vibe. There were the peculiar characters with strange names, people in conflict with their world. But on another level, it was like each charcter stood for something in the scheme of society. The "trifling" black man made impotent by racism, the strong but vulerable black women, the frivolous white girl drawn to and repelled by a black man, and last by not least, the man in the basement who was "The System" in the flesh. I referred to them as atypical because in the end the losers and winners seemed to have changed places. All of all, I thought it was a very provocative novel; nice change of pace. |
Kc_trudiva
Regular Poster
Username: Kc_trudiva
Post Number: 41
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 02:14 pm: |
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cynique,
i agree with the toni morrison vibe. i read Love twice and each time i got something different from it. i'm sure if i were to read The Man In My Basement again, the same would happen.
btw, in your character descriptions you forgot the promiscuous Black woman seeking love from all the wrong men since she couldn't get it from the one she wanted. |
Akaivyleaf
Regular Poster
Username: Akaivyleaf
Post Number: 50
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 02:14 pm: |
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Like I need another book on my TBR list but I have to read this book this week so I know what you all are talking about. Its intrigued me.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 302
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 02:33 pm: |
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That's right, kc-trudiva, I did forget the other black woman type.
Akaivyleaf, this is an intriguing book. And best of all, it's short. I'm inclined to think that you might put a different face on the Man in the basement. I'll wait for your take on it. |
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