The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990-1994 - Hardcover

Crouch, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679442022 ISBN 13: 9780679442028

Publisher: Pantheon, 1995

Synopsis

In this collection of essays long and short, the hugely controversial critic and author of Notes of a Hanging Judge gives us a refreshingly iconoclastic view of race in American culture and society. Whether Crouch is writing about the U.S. Constitution as blues, or jazz (Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis), he is always incisive and provocative.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

ection of essays long and short, the hugely controversial critic and author of Notes of a Hanging Judge gives us a refreshingly iconoclastic view of race in American culture and society. Whether Crouch is writing about the U.S. Constitution as blues, or jazz (Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis), he is always incisive and provocative.

Reviews

In speeches, essays and reviews from publications like the New Republic, Crouch (Notes of a Hanging Judge) offers eloquent, pungent takes on racial politics, literature, film and music. The author made his name as a jazz critic, and he invokes jazz to proclaim that our society's "multiple miscegenations" are proof and source of enduring vitality and renewal. Thus, he has no truck with racial balkanizers or those who claim rapsters as the soul of black authenticity. A disciple of Ralph Ellison, he hails the recently departed writer as "a citizen of this nation" and argues that black filmmakers must develop a more nuanced American vision. Crouch's deconstruction of Miles Davis, his sympathy for Quentin Tarantino, his celebration of novelist Leon Forrest?all make good reading. So what's missing? Crouch's view of a practical politics to engage and enhance his oft-invoked democratic vistas.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Crouch, contributing editor to the New Republic, once a jazz critic for Village Voice, artistic consultant to Jazz at Lincoln Center, and author of Notes of a Hanging Judge (1990), is not an easy person to relate to because he is one of those "in-your-face" thinkers whose very smugness seems meant to alienate and provoke. He refers to himself and other blacks as "Negroes" and Amiri Baraka as LeRoi Jones; surprisingly, Malcolm X is not recognized as Malcolm Little (mustn't give him ideas). One gets the feeling from his numerous television appearances that the conservative Right consult only with Crouch on questions about black Americans, for no black critic attacks liberals, feminists, and black power leaders with the flair of Mr. Crouch. This self-conscious flair extends to his writing in spades, as in the opening essay on the role of the outlaw in American democracy, where at one point he writes of a "set of appetites focused on the exotic, bedeviled by a nostalgia for the mud, given to a love of sensationalism that completely hollows out a pretentious vulgarity." So, imagine my frustration as I continued reading to discover a creative, at times, eloquent thinker who will lead readers through many subtle discoveries if given the chance. The book is a collection of pieces Crouch prepared for diverse purposes: essays printed elsewhere, converted talks, and reflections on cultural happenings. His interests are wide ranging--film, literature, politics--all informed by a keen analytical mind that, at times, transcends the liberal or conservative labels. His analysis of films vis-a-vis his concerns for the challenges black filmmakers "need to meet" yields startling results when applied to the work of Quentin Tarantino, Albert and Allen Hughes' Menace to Society, and Leon Ichaso's Sugar Hill. This in-your-face Negro, this provocateur, talks a lot of interesting stuff. Bonnie Smothers

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679442022
• ISBN 13: 9780679442028
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 267