Published after Ellison's death, this follow-up to Invisible Man is a thunderous epic of memory, faith, loss and identity.
'Words are your business, boy. Not just the Word. Words are everything'
'Tell me what happened while there's still time,' demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate black baptist minister he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young orphan, Sunraider was taken in and raised by Hickman, before reinventing himself as a racist politician. Now, as the two men confront the truth about their shared past in a final reckoning, Ellison's masterly novel takes in memories of a southern childhood, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and the richness of the African-American experience.
'Majestic' Toni Morrison
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Or would it? Ellison's literary executor, John Callahan, has now quarried a smaller, more coherent work from all that raw material. Gone are the epic proportions that Ellison so clearly envisioned. Instead, Juneteenth revolves around just two characters: Adam Sunraider, a white, race-baiting New England senator, and Alonzo "Daddy" Hickman, a black Baptist minister who turns out to have a paradoxical (and paternal) relationship to his opposite number. As the book opens, Sunraider is delivering a typically bigoted peroration on the Senate floor when he's peppered by an assassin's bullets. Mortally wounded, he summons the elderly Hickman to his bedside. There the two commence a journey into their shared past, which (unlike the rest of 1950s America) represents a true model of racial integration.
Ellison juggles the multiple ironies of race and religion with effortless brilliance and his delight in Hickman's house-wrecking rhetoric is contagious:
Bliss, I've heard you cutting some fancy didoes on the radio, but son, Eatmore was romping and rampaging and walking through Jerusalem just like John! Oh, but wasn't he romping! Maybe you were too young to get it all but that night that mister was 10,000 misters and his voice was pure gold.
The portion of Juneteenth that covers Bliss's ecclesiastical education--perhaps a third of the entire book--is as electrifying as anything in Invisible Man. In comparison, though, the rest of the novel seems like pretty slim pickings. For one thing, much of the plot--including Bliss's transformation from pint-sized preacher to United States senator--is absent. For another, Ellison's confinement of the two top-billed players to a hospital room makes for an awfully static narrative. Granted, he intended their dialogue to exist "on a borderline between the folk poetry and religious rhetoric" (or so he wrote in his notes). But this is a dicey recipe for a novel and Juneteenth veers between naturalism and hallucination much less effectively than its predecessor did.
None of this is to assail Ellison's artistry, which remains on ample display. The problem is that Callahan's splice job--which well may be the best one possible--remains weak at the seams. So should readers give Juneteenth a miss? The answer would still have to be no. The best parts are as powerful and necessary as anything in our literature. --James Marcus
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A jazz novel, a sermon and a song of praise to the richness of African-American experienceFrom Ralph Ellison - author of the classic novel, Invisible Man - the long-awaited follow up. Here is the master of American vernacular - the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech - at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century.'Tell me what happened while there's still time,' demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery- how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780241215005
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 400. Seller Inventory # 371468567
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780241215005
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780241215005
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. Seller Inventory # B9780241215005
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780241215005-GDR
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 336 pages. 7.72x5.04x1.10 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0241215005
Book Description Condition: New. In. Seller Inventory # ria9780241215005_new
Book Description Condition: New. Num Pages: 336 pages. BIC Classification: FC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 131 x 237 x 23. Weight in Grams: 252. . 2012. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # V9780241215005