Meteor in the Madhouse - Softcover

Forrest, Leon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810128055 ISBN 13: 9780810128057

Publisher: TriQuarterly, 2011

Synopsis

Forrest's long-awaited last work follows the last days of journalist Joubert Jones and his long relationship with his friend and mentor, the idealistic and doomed poet Leonard Foster.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Like 1999's publication of Juneteenth, this novel is a literary event: seminal African-America writer Leon Forrest (1937-1997) is not as well-known as Ralph Ellison, but during his lifetime he elicited high praise from such figures as Stanley Crouch and Toni Morrison. Forrest's masterwork, Divine Days, introduced the successful dramatist and professor Joubert Jones, who here narrates the five interconnected novellas riffs on his memories during the day of his death in November 1992. The characters all have roots in the south, in Forrest County, Miss., but have long gone north, to Forest County, Ill. (a stand-in for Chicago). The stories are held together thematically by Joubert's memory of Novembers past, such as one in 1972 when Marvella Gooseberry, a neighbor of his adoptive grandmother, Gram Gussie Jones, "flipped her wig" and threatened to shoot herself and others with a gun; the November he visited his friend and rival, Leonard Foster, in the state mental hospital; and the November day when his great-aunt Lucasta Jones was abandoned by her lover, Tucson. In the final novella, Joubert's fatal visit to Williemain's Barbershop, where he is killed in a drive-by shooting, is recounted. On the scaffolding of these memories and events, Forrest hangs a multitude of anecdotes and moments of almost musical verbal invention. The inspired comic moments include an extended piece recounting Joubert's escape from a cult group led by Foster in the Holiday Inn, a cab ride with a white amateur boxer and her black girlfriend, and the strange dental practices of his Gram Gussie Jones. While Forrest's talent is undeniable, readers may find themselves out of the loop, plot-wise; his editors have included a helpful appendix that summarizes the narrative.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The world lost a radiant spirit and a brilliantly ebullient artist when Leon Forrest died in 1997, so it's a great boon to be granted this masterwork, the last book he brought to completion. A suite of five linked novellas set in the author's lively fictional universe, Forest County, a looking-glass image of Chicago's South Side, it has as its intrepid hero Joubert Antoine Jones, the protagonist of Forrest's magnificent Divine Days (1992). Now a successful playwright, Jones remains enthralled by the misadventures of his loved ones, especially his great-aunt Lucasta, the crazy poet Leonard Foster, and friends Step Bottomly and Hopkins Golightly. Jones recounts numerous wild stories of love and betrayal, art and politics, fantasy and eccentricity that are by turns hilarious and tragic, earthy and mystical, odd and heroic, all told in a cascade of gorgeously musical, life-embracing, soul-raising language. Marianne Forrest provides a key to her late husband's storytelling magic in her introduction: "I don't know of anyone who enjoyed the company of others more than Leon did." Indeed, it is his shrewd delight in the marvels and peculiarities of his fellow human beings that makes Forrest such an entrancing and compassionate writer. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: TriQuarterly
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810128055
• ISBN 13: 9780810128057
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 273