Stories of John Edgar Wideman - Hardcover

Wideman, John Edgar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679407197 ISBN 13: 9780679407195

Publisher: Pantheon, 1992

Synopsis

A collection of stories by the author of A Glance Away, Hurry Home, Brothers and Keepers, Reuben, Fever, and Philadelphia Fire features tales of African Americans from all walks of life who reside in Homewood, a black section of Pittsburgh. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Reviews

Once again Wideman ( Philadelphia Fire ) chronicles the black experience in urban America with great intensity and lyricism. Drastic shifts from fierce to tender are common in this collection of 35 stories, as are fragments of conversations and wistful childhood memories negated by adult experiences. Many tales focus on a family living in Pittsburgh's Homewood area. The book's first section, "All Stories Are True," has specific inspiration from Wideman's own life; it features 10 new stories told in the voices of parents whose son is incarcerated, the adult siblings of the jailed man, and the criminal himself, who resigns himself to the consequences of his misdeeds. Other standouts here include a journalist's jarring recollection of fear and violence in South Africa and the disarming story of a black graduate student's struggle to cope with bigotry. The two remaining groups of tales were previously collected. "Fever" (1989) offers wide-ranging narratives in which bright miracles give protagonists hope in a harsh urban environment, while "Damballah" (1981) returns to the extended family in Homewood. Wideman's characters struggle to balance contrasting currents of gentleness and rage; his furious prose borders on poetry and reveals a masterful feel for the spoken word.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This hefty collection reprints Wideman's previous volumes of stories, Fever (1989) and Damballah (1981)--which are also being reprinted this year by the University of Pittsburgh Press as part of a single hardback edition of Wideman's ``Homewood Books''--and also includes ten new pieces. Subtitled ``All Stories Are True,'' Wideman's new work blends a number of unconventional narrative voices with some frank autobiographical material, and the result is gripping, urgent, and incendiary. The title piece and ``Casa Grande'' address the personal tragedies of Wideman's brother and son, both serving time for different murders. The same ``Wideman'' narrates ``Backseat,'' a reminiscence of his grandmother, and of early sexual escapades. Reality forces him to go behind the veil of fiction--in ``Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies,'' he gives voice, and an imagined future, to a baby as it falls down a garbage chute; in ``A Voice Foretold,'' he visits the scene of a crime where an innocent black man was murdered by police; and in ``What He Saw,'' he bears witness to the horrors of Soweto, and ponders the ambiguities of his presence there. Wideman continues to test the limits of fiction in a stylistic sense as well. ``Loon Man'' embodies the mental confusion of its man-boy narrator; ``Everybody Knew Bubba Riff'' is one long sentence riffing on a murdered homeboy; and ``Signs'' delves into the psychological complexities of racism. Just when you might suspect the rage and despair to overwhelm him comes ``Welcome,'' a wise and hard-earned meditation on loss that ends with the hope of family, place, and of ``keep on keeping on.'' Despite a few predictable rhetorical bursts, Wideman here proves a remarkable artist, a descendant of Richard Wright, by way of Samuel Beckett. Read chronologically, these stories chart Wideman's growth as a storyteller He's willing to take risks, and most often succeeds triumphantly. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This work reprints PEN/Faulkner award winner Wideman's collections Damballah (Avon, 1981; Random, 1988. reprint) and Fever ( LJ 11/1/89), along with a new collection, All Stories Are True. Most of the stories are set in Homewood, the black section of Pittsburgh where Wideman grew up and which he has since turned into his own version of Yoknapatawpha County. Damballah consists of 12 interrelated stories that trace successive generations of a fugitive slave's family--the author's own ancestors. Wideman presents the book as a series of letters to his brother Robby, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in prison. The two concluding sections further explore the Homewood theme, with retellings of old family tales and street-corner legends and with frequent meditations on the contrast between Robby's fate and Wideman's own success in the white world. The entire volume displays a novelistic unity unusual in short story collections. Recommended for most collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/92.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679407197
• ISBN 13: 9780679407195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432