Sull'Autore
Ed Pavlic is author of twelve books and Distinguished Research Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Georgia.
Opere di Ed Pavlic
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Sesso
- male
Utenti
Recensioni
Premi e riconoscimenti
Statistiche
- Opere
- 14
- Utenti
- 92
- Popolarità
- #202,476
- Voto
- 3.9
- Recensioni
- 1
- ISBN
- 25
This would be valuable for looking at any writer since one wonderful aspect of the literary arts is their ability to speak to different generations, different cultures and different historical periods. What Pavlic emphasizes here is the importance of "black music writ large" to Baldwin in both his life and his art. This lyrical aspect, as in music, is experiential in nature. If one also accepts that a reader, particularly an active reader, is also 'writing' the novel she is reading, then a work from 1963 can easily speak to life in 2016.
This volume is less a collection of essays about specific works than it is a playing of Baldwin's oeuvre with some riffing or improvising added as a way of contextualizing these works within contemporary culture. A type of call and response though that analogy is admittedly weak in my application here.
I reread some of Baldwin's books after I read this and found I had a much different interaction with them, almost exclusively from paying greater attention to voice first. I would highly recommend this for those interested in Baldwin, as well as applying that approach to other writers whose works seem to speak to you even when you aren't sure why.
Reviewed from an ARC made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (altro)