Synopsis
Fabulous, wildly comic, and Ulysses-like, Divine Days explores the mythical world of Leon Forrest's literary kingdom, Forest County. It is a huge oratorio of the sacred and the profane, set in bars, churches, and barbershops over a crucial seven-day period in the life of would-be playwright Joubert Jones during February 1966. Divine Days creates a profound microcosm of African-American life. It is the most prodigious literary creation since Ellison's Invisible Man forty years ago.
Joubert Jones - playwright, journalist, bartender, lover - confronts and transcends the power of a fantastic group of bar denizens whose personalities run the gamut of classical myths, Shakespearean heros, Shakespearean villains, religious true-believers, and ghetto dwellers.
Joubert is evolving a memory from the yeasty material of his friend and mentor Sugar-Groove into a play. Sugar-Groove is a world traveler, a mythical lover, who has twenty nicknames connected with his prowess. He is trickster-as-angel.
Joubert's volatile and fragile girlfriend, Imani, is desperately searching for her abandoned siblings, a meaningful self-definition of her Blackness, and a place to settle her warring spirit. Joubert also encounters the powerful presence of his Aunt Eloise and the ever-haunting phantasmagoric W. A. D. Ford, the demonic trickster and manipulator of bodies and souls. Ford is the Mephistopheles of Forest County, and he comes to represent the forces of cosmic evil in the world.
The neighborhood of Joubert's imagination becomes a theater enraptured with the voices of the living and the dead, acted out in Aunt Eloise's Night Light Lounge. The critic John Cawelti has called this novel: "the Ulysses of the South Side." In the tradition of Joyce's Dedalus, Ellison's invisible narrator, Bellow's Augie March, and Heller's Yossarian, Joubert's voice emerges clearly upon Divine Days's ebullient stage.
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About the Author
Leon Forrest served as Chair of African-American Studies at Northwestern University where he is a Professor of English.
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Divine Days: A Novel
Published by
W W Norton & Co Inc, 1993
ISBN 10: 039303612X
ISBN 13: 9780393036121
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Grey Matter Books, Hadley, MA, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. 1st edition, also a review copy, Norton review slip as well as a black & white glossy photograph of Leon tucked inside front, dust jacket shows minimal edge wear, blue boards in excellent shape, pages bright and crisp, unmarked. Seller Inventory # 004547
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Divine Days
Published by
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1992
ISBN 10: 039303612X
ISBN 13: 9780393036121
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Softcover
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
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Softcover. Condition: Fine. Reprint. Trade paperback. Sticker shadow on front cover else fine. Seller Inventory # 547541
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Divine Days: A Novel
Published by
W W Norton & Co Inc, 1993
ISBN 10: 039303612X
ISBN 13: 9780393036121
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Twice Sold Tales, Ashfield, MA, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. 1992 Another Chicago Press hard cover - 1st edition 1st printing - ex-library whose only evidence is stamp on title page and closed page edge - and label at dust jacket binding and inside back cover (minor) - ink mark and stain on closed page edge - minor wear to dust jacket (now in mylar cover) minor glue residue on cover - otherwise dust jacket and cover fine binding strong contents clean - hard to find edition - enjoy. Seller Inventory # 2107220004
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Divine Days: A Novel
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Divine Days: A Novel
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Condition: good. This book is in Good condition. There may be some notes and highligting but otherwise the book is in overall good condition. Seller Inventory # BCV.039303612X.G
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Divine Days: A Novel
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