Albert Murray (1916–2013)

Collection of magazine essays written in the 60s and collected and published in book form in 1970. I liked Murray’s basic perspective that American blacks and whites have much more in common than not, and that it would be good for people to realize that, and build on it, But these essays were really responding to events and discussions in the sixties and I didn’t follow a lot of it or find it meaningful. I did like the appendix with a summary of his life, which was amazing, and I think he deserves a good biography.… (mais)

I picked this up because Murray is the author for November for the American Authors Challenge, and I think I would have been better served with one of his novels. Not because I think this isn't a worthwhile read, but rather because I didn't realize quite how much brain power it was going to need and I didn't really have it to give just now. So some of my slight "heh?" here is almost certainly my fault. That said, Murray (I think) is exploring Western literary conceptions of the hero and discussing how they relate to the "blues idiom" and the African American blues hero. I'll confess that I was frequently at a loss as to how he was connecting the two. Not that I doubt there is a connection (there could hardly not be a connection?), but if he was making strong, explicit connections on the page, I missed them. He often seemed to jump from a discussion of Thomas Mann or Ernest Hemingway into the blues without showing how he got from one to the other. I dunno. I probably should read it again, giving especial attention to about the first thirty pages, which I got through before fully realizing how much I needed to slow down and make notes if I had any hope of getting what he was saying. I will say that the last fifteen pages or so really grabbed me--he was talking about different kinds of heroes and how they relate to the world. This section made me take notice because it set off all kinds of "Ooo, Tolkien" and "oh, Dean Winchester" klaxons in my brain. I still wasn't following the connections Murray was making, but I was making some of my own. Yay? Better than a stick in the eye, but I still feel like I largely missed his point here.… (mais)