Dreamer - Softcover

Charles R. Johnson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184195490X ISBN 13: 9781841954905

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

Set against the racial turbulence of the Civil Rights Era, Dreamer is the first work of fiction to explore the life of Martin Luther King Jr - political visionary, human rights activist, preacher, scholar and martyr. Johnson's brilliantly realised historical novel deftly handles its material, weaving together a subtle and beautiful novel of immense power and importance. Dreamer is a multi-layered masterpiece.

About this title

Review

At the center of National Book Award winner Charles Johnson's novel Dreamer are three remarkable men: Martin Luther King Jr.; his aide, Matthew Bishop, an African American philosophy student; and Chaym Smith, a man who is a dead ringer for the civil rights leader. Not only does Smith resemble King, but he also shares his intellectual voracity, widely read in both Eastern and Western philosophy, proficient in Sanskrit and martial arts, and a talented painter. But where King is deeply spiritual, Smith is a cynic; where King has the full force of his strong beliefs and his strong family heritage, Smith has nothing but a lifetime of misfortune to shape his attitudes. When he offers to become King's stand-in, Johnson creates an ideal situation in which to explore issues long at the heart of the "race issue" in America: the inequality between black and white, even between black and black.

As the novel moves forward in time toward that fateful day in Memphis, Johnson concentrates on the relationship between Bishop--the narrator--and Smith, a man who, with better luck, might have been as great as King. Periodically, the author also lets us in on King's own meditations on his life and faith, and the movement to which he has given them. All in all, Dreamer is the kind of novel Charles Johnson does so well: a book about a big subject, chock full of ideas and populated by characters articulate enough to argue them.

From the Back Cover

Set against the tensions of Civil Rights era America, Dreamer is a remarkable fictional excursion into the last two years of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, when the political and personal pressures on this country's most preeminent moral leader were the greatest. While in Chicago for his first northern campaign against poverty and inequality, King encounters Chaym Smith, whose startling physical resemblance to King wins him the job of official stand-in. Matthew Bishop, a civil rights worker and loyal follower of King, is given the task of training the smart and deeply cynical Smith for the job. In doing so, Bishop must face the issue of what makes one man great while another man can only stand in for greatness. Provocative, heartfelt, and masterfully rendered, Charles Johnson confirms yet again that he is one of the great treasures of modern American literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 184195490X
• ISBN 13: 9781841954905
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236